PED-206: Firms and Finance in Developing Countries

Semester: Spring

Credit: 1.0

Faculty: Asim Khwaja

Schedule

Day Time Location
First Day 1/26
Meet Day T/Th 11:40 AM - 1:00 PM L130
Review F 11:40 AM - 1:00 PM L130

Description

This course examines issues facing firms and financial markets in developing countries. It combines both theoretical and empirical approaches that emphasize the incentives and institutional structures that affect firm performance and financial markets ability to intermediate capital in low-income countries. Topics examined include micro-finance, small and medium enterprise development, business groups and clusters, corporate governance, and agency, informational, and regulatory failures in debt and equity markets. Rather than rely on cookie-cutter approaches, students will instead be challenged to use the tools and theories they have learned to identify relevant questions, formulate structured responses, and propose feasible solutions. The course format utilizes discussions based on assigned readings combined with short presentations and written assignments to allow students to develop an analytic and critical approach to examining these issues.

Prerequisites: Microeconomics at the level of API-109/110 or API-111/112 or equivalent and statistics/econometrics at the level of API-209/210 or equivalent.