Economics MSc

Royal Holloway, University of London

This module will describe the key principles of academic integrity, focusing on university assignments. Plagiarism, collusion and commissioning will be described as activities that undermine academic integrity, and the possible consequences of engaging in such activities will be described. Activities, with feedback, will provide you with opportunities to reflect and develop your understanding of academic integrity principles.

You will attend a set of preparatory classes to equip you with the necessary skills required for research, including a hands-on approach to using statistical packages and reading peer-reviewed articles. You will be expected to use either econometric or statistical techniques, and apply your knowledge and skills from the other quantitative methods and theory modules taken during your studies, to produce your own piece of research around 10,000 words in length.

This module will provide you with an overview of the principal methods of econometric analysis. Emphasis is placed on applied econometrics and will ensure that you are comfortable when reading and evaluating the econometric work of others in order to produce good quality applied econometric work of your own. You will be introduced to the principles and assumptions underlying ordinary least squares, the consequences of any departure from these assumptions, and methods used for testing. The second half of the module will focus on time-series analysis.

The aim of the course is to give guidance to students who want to work in the financial industry. The level of this course is mostly for third year or MSc students, but it does not require pre-existing knowledge so first and second year students can follow this course. This course aims to bridge the gap between finance studies at university and what finance industry professional expect from graduates. The course explains precisely what existing finance jobs entail, what is required from the people working in those jobs, what the perspectives of these jobs are. This course will also prepare students for the professional interview of such a job.

This module will provide you with an introduction to modern intertemporal macroeconomics. You will learn about the tools used for dynamic economic analysis and apply them to topics such as economic fluctuations, unemployment, long-run growth, consumption decisions by households and investment decisions by firms. You will develop an understanding of dynamic macroeconomic models of economic behaviour, the main theories of economic fluctuations, the modern theory of unemployment, the principal determinants of consumption and investment decisions, and look at the process of economic growth.

In this module you will develop an understanding of basic mathematical methods that are used in the study of Economics and Finance, including basic matrix analysis, topology, statistics, and probability theory. You will look at differentiation and integration of standard functions, and basic manipulations of vectors and matrices. You will also examine various optimisation problems and theorems leading to certain basic results in calculus.

This module will develop your understanding of the basics of modern microeconomic analysis. You will become familiar with the tools that economists use to analyse problems of resource allocation in market settings, beginning with a formal analysis of the optimising behaviour of consumers and producers. You will be introduced to markets and the notion of competitive equilibrium, in both partial and general equilibrium settings. You will then look at how individual market participants can affect prices, analysing the problem of a monopolist. Finally, you will consider static game theory to analyse markets where a small number of firms compete with each other (oligopolies).