<p>Harvard’s not really all that big on ‘practical’ courses…at least not in FAS.</p>
<p>A few classes that might be relevant. Ec1330 used to be taught by David Laibson + Andrei Shleifer and had a significant behavioral finance component. It seems unclear as to who is teaching the class next year.</p>
<p>The courses below that start with “1” are intended for undergrads. Those that start with “2” are intended for grads - but you could probably get in if you talk/email the professor.</p>
<p>[Economics 1030. Psychology and Economics]
Catalog Number: 4709
Instructor to be determined
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Psychological concepts include social preferences, impulsivity, bounded rationality, loss-aversion, over-confidence, self-serving biases, hedonics, and neuroscience. Economic concepts include arbitrage, equilibrium, rational choice, utility maximization, Bayesian beliefs, game theory. Integrates these psychological and economic concepts to understand behavioral phenomena such as portfolio choice, saving, procrastination, addiction, asset pricing, auction bidding, labor supply, cooperation, persuasion.
Note: Expected to be given in 2010–11.
Prerequisite: Social Analysis 10 and knowledge of univariate calculus.</p>
<p>conomics 2530b. International Finance
Catalog Number: 7144
Gita Gopinath
Half course (spring term). M., W., 1–2:30. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
Financial aspects of growth and income determination in open economies. Topics include international business cycle, monetary and exchange rate regimes, capital flows, and current issues in international macroeconomic policy.
Prerequisite: Economics 2530a provides extremely useful background.</p>
<p>Economics 1723. Capital Markets
Catalog Number: 1917
Owen A. Lamont
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., 10-11:30, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 12, 13
An introduction to the economic analysis of investment decisions and financial markets. Concepts include time discounting, market efficiency, risk, and arbitrage. These concepts are applied to fixed-income securities, equities, and derivative securities.
Prerequisite: Mathematics 20 and Economics 1010a or 1011a.
Economics 1745. Corporate Finance
Catalog Number: 5889
Efraim Benmelech
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., 1-2:30, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 15, 16
Introduction to corporate finance, including capital budgeting, capital structure of firms, dividend policy, corporate governance, and takeovers.
Prerequisite: Economics 1010a or 1011a, Mathematics 20, and Statistics 100.</p>
<p>Economics 1759. The Financial Crisis - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 90007
Jeremy C. Stein
Half course (spring term). M., W., 1-2:30. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
This course provides a detailed examination of events in financial markets during the crisis period that began in August of 2007. Topics include: the housing bubble and mortgage markets, the role of the banks and the shadow banking system, policy responses by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, and longer-run regulatory reform. The conceptual approach to these topics will draw heavily on recent research in financial economics.
Prerequisite: Either Economics 1723 or 1745 is required.</p>
<p>Economics 2723. Asset Pricing I
Catalog Number: 2847
John Y. Campbell
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., 2:30–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
An introduction to financial economics emphasizing discrete-time models and empirical applications. Reviews basic asset pricing theory. Discusses empirical topics including predictability of stock and bond returns, the equity premium puzzle, and intertemporal equilibrium models.
Note: Offered jointly with the Business School as 4209.
Prerequisite: Economics 2010a or 2020a, or permission of instructor.</p>
<p>Economics 2725. Corporate Finance
Catalog Number: 1427
Efraim Benmelech
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., 10–11:30. EXAM GROUP: 12, 13
Theory and empirical evidence on capital structure, dividends, investment policy, and managerial incentives. Topics include banking, corporate governance, and mergers.
Note: Offered jointly with the Business School as 4223.
Prerequisite: Economics 2060.</p>
<p>Economics 2728. Behavioral Finance
Catalog Number: 8633
Jeremy C. Stein
Half course (spring term). M., W., 10–11:30. EXAM GROUP: 3, 4
Deals with theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of financial markets using psychological or behavioral ideas. Topics include limited arbitrage, predictability of security returns, and trading volume.</p>
<p>if you want a undergraduate finance major, Harvard is most certainly NOT for you. you may find one or two coruses here and there but that doesn’t amount to a major. you might be interested in UPenn’s programs. they offer such things. or at least business programs for undergraduates. there are many clubs that offer experience in finance, but they NEVER replace that experience. one is the Harvard Financial Analysts Club, another is Veritas Financial group. there are many others, but these are the most prominent. The are others that provide business experience, and minimal finance experience such as Harvard Student Agencies which a student run organziation. There is also the Harvard College Entrepreneurship Forum, again business/entrepreneurship but you could use it to get more experience in finance through internships.
Also please note that it is one thing to have knowledge of finance and another to have experience in finance. you’ll mostly find the latter at Harvard and hardly the former.</p>
<p>@int’lstudent’12 - Good points about the clubs (I’d like to also recommend the Harvard Crimson Business Board). </p>
<p>I don’t think anyone would recommend Harvard for undergrad finance. But at the same time, I don’t think I would recommend undergrad finance! </p>
<p>Wharton is excellent at what it is, but a Wharton degree is far more narrowing (in terms of post-grad options) than a Harvard Econ/Applied Math/Stats degree. If you’re an uber business nerd who knows you’d hate the theoretical nature of Harvard’s programs (and you’re dying to do PE out of undergrad), then maybe Wharton is right for you. But if that’s not your situation, I think you should strongly consider a place like Harvard or Yale (or UPenn CAS).</p>
<p>Thanks so much everyone for your help.</p>
<p>Thanks for explaining that courses that start with “1” are intended for undergraduates. How do I determine whether the course is of a first year, second year, third year or fourth year level for an undergraduate?</p>
<p>There’s no real designation like that.</p>
<p>In economics, most first years take Social Analysis 10 (the intro econ course). As a second year (or a first year who had already taken AP Econ), you take Ec 1010a/b or Ec 1011a/b (intermediate macro + micro). </p>
<p>After you’ve taken that sequence, you can take pretty much any of the courses intended for undergraduates (a few might have other prereqs).</p>
<p>Interestingly enough, because Harvard has been around for so long, the course numbering system at Harvard is rather haphazard, and depends largely on individual departments’ histories. I think new courses are numbered with some logic, but older, more storied courses often have very odd numberings. The concentration intro course for music concentrators, for example, is Music 51. How’s that for illogical?</p>
<p>The moral of the story? Don’t go looking for 101 courses in the course catalog.</p>
<p>The reason I ask is what level the courses are is because I want to know whether I can get credit transferred back at my uni. For us, an undergraduate degree is basically 3 years so the difficulty of the courses are ranked by the first number, 1 for first years, 2 for second years and 3 for third years. </p>
<p>I have narrowed down my course selections to the following thanks to everyone’s help:
The subjects that I have elected to study at Harvard University are:
Economics 1123 - Introduction to Econometrics
Economics 1011a - Macroeconomic Theory
Economics 1535 - International Trade and Investment
Economics 1542 - International Trade Policy</p>
<p>Supplementary subjects (in case the above are not approved due to capacity or other reasons)
Economics 1812 - The US Labor Market
Economics 1480 - Moral Perspectives on Economic Growth
Economics 1035 - Policy applications of Psychocology and Economics</p>
<p>If anyone can help by commenting on the level of difficulty of these courses (or at what stage of your undergraduate degree to people usually take them, ie first year or second year or third year etc), then that would be great. Thanks heaps.</p>
<p>That was a facetious, but yes, this guy started trading in his dorm at Harvard, and ended up founding one of the biggest hedge funds.</p>
<p>[Kenneth</a> C. Griffin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_C._Griffin]Kenneth”>Kenneth C. Griffin - Wikipedia)</p>