• choose an applied field and develop a program of study
• six field courses based on area of specialization
• second comprehensive exam

• complete dissertation proposal
• dissertation research and writing
• dissertation defence

Please note the grouping of field courses by area is illustrative, and some courses are applicable to more than one area. The availability of field courses will change from year to year, and additional field courses may also become available.

Finance

• FIN 801 Advanced Corporate Finance: Provides students with a fundamental understanding of the current issues of interest in research in the modern theory of corporate finance. It provides students with a theoretical background in areas such as firm theory, security issuance, capital raising, capital structure, and corporate governance. Presentation and discussion of articles from academic journals are used as tools to enhance student learning.
• FIN 802 Advanced Investment Theory: Develops investment theory through the financial economics framework of Von-Neumann Morgenstern utility. This allows exploration of risk aversion, stochastic dominance, and portfolio optimization. MPT and CAPM are derived. Arrow-Debreu contingent claims and option pricing theory are addressed. Additional topics include risk-neutral valuation, stochastic discount factors, and the consumption CAPM.
• FIN 803 Empirical Methods in Finance: Presents a critical look at current financial models and gives the student experience in the systematic analysis of financial data. Students are exposed to a suite of analytical tools that allow rigorous assessment of the characteristics of financial data and models.
• FIN 805 Fixed Income Securities: This course considers the financial concepts required to invest in fixed income securities. Topics include the mathematics required to evaluate fixed income cash flows, measuring and hedging fixed income portfolio risk, the yield curve in theory and practice, repurchase agreements, interest rate forward agreements, futures contracts, swaps, and mortgage-backed securities.

Health and labour

• ECON 823 Labour Economics: The functioning of labour markets including labour supply, labour demand, accumulation of skills, contracts, and unemployment.
• ECON 833 Economic Evaluation Methods in Health Services Research: This course provides an array of economic evaluation methods used to assess health and healthcare programs, policies, technologies and interventions. Topics include methods of measuring health and health outcomes, as well as various economic evaluation methods (cost effectiveness, cost utility and cost benefit analyses), and their applications in health and healthcare policies.
• ECON 834 Health Economics: Examines health economic issues and the functioning of health care markets using microeconomic theory. Topics include health insurance and demand for health, production of health, economic evaluation methods, economic explanations for the behavior of health care providers, functioning of insurance markets, cost efficiency and regulation in health care markets.

Industrial organization, strategy and firm behaviour

• ECON 850 Game Theory, Strategic and Cooperative Choices: A systematic introduction to game theory and its application in economics. Provides concepts and tools for understanding current research and performing your own research in the field. Covers both non-cooperative and cooperative game theories.
• ECON 870 Behavioural Economics: Details the economics of behaviour and the importance of behavioural assumptions for the analytical predictions of economic theory, with special emphasis of the theory of the firm, household economics, experimental economics, rational choice analyses and public policy.
• AREC 825 Research Issues in Agribusiness Management: Lectures/discussions will emphasize the development and illustration of concepts, issues, and research questions in agribusiness, both past and present. The course readings will provide a general framework for class lecture/discussions. Through assignments and in-class discussions, students will broaden their understanding of practical and research issues within the context of agribusiness management.
• AREC 840 Economics of Agri-Food Marketing: Economic analysis of agriculture and food marketing systems. Topics include transactions costs and the role of institutions, spot markets, contracts and vertical integration, market power, price discovery, quality signalling and information asymmetry in agri-food markets. The relevant theoretical literature and empirical applications in these areas are reviewed.
• AREC 842 Agricultural Market Organizations: Develops a conceptual framework in which organizations, their behaviour, their interactions with other firms and their impact on an industry can be studied, compared and analyzed. The relevant literature in organizational theory, industrial organization and contract theory is reviewed, especially as it focuses on theoretical and empirical work in the areas of co-operatives, agri-business firms and other forms of organizations. Examination of these types of firms is undertaken to better understand their behaviour and to develop concepts that can be put to use in analyzing other types of organizations.
• JSGS 865 Decision Making in Organizations: Examines the manner in which decisions are made in organizations, with a particular focus on policy decisions. The course uses a wide variety of behavioral theories to look at phenomena such as policy traps, framing, unwarranted optimism, and group think.
  

International

• AREC 855 International Agricultural Trade Policy: The economic analysis of agricultural trade policy. Topics include introduction to international trade theory, an introduction to trade policy, methods of protection by importers and methods of protection by exporters.
• ECON 811 International Trade Theory: Studies recent developments in the pure theory of trade. Topics include current explanations of patterns of trade and factor movements, the formation of regional free trade areas, commercial policies and international cartels.
• ECON 812 International Monetary Economics: The nature of adjustment in open economics, under various international monetary systems, to real and monetary disturbances. The systems investigated will include fixed exchange rates, both with and without sterilization, flexible exchange rates and managed floating.

Policy

• ECON 830 Public Finance: A study of modern theoretical constructs and some of their applications. Topics include cost-benefit analysis, fiscal policy, the public debt, analysis of taxes and intergovernmental fiscal relations.
• AREC 832 Rural Development: The study of theories of rural development in advanced-market economies, a review of empirical studies of selected North American rural economies and a survey of national and subnational North American development policies. A particular emphasis will be placed on empirical analysis of economic development issues.
• AREC 845 Transportation Economics and Regulatory Policy: Economic analysis of the Canadian transportation sector, with particular emphasis on the movement of agricultural commodities. Specific topics include an overview of basic operations research methods including linear programming and efficiency measurement, analysis of industrial organization and regulation in the transportation sector using contestability theory and the new empirical industrial organization (NEIO), an introduction to the economics of networks, and an examination of the link between transportation and economic development.
• AREC 851 Agricultural Policy: Focuses on an economic analysis of agricultural policies in Canada. In addition, general economic policy will be discussed in terms of how it impacts on trade, investments, economic growth and efficiency.
• AREC 855 International Agricultural Trade Policy: The economic analysis of agricultural trade policy. Topics include introduction to international trade theory, an introduction to trade policy, methods of protection by importers and methods of protection by exporters.
• JSGS 862 Political Economy: Focuses on the politics of aggregating individual decisions into collective action, revealing the difficulty of formulating and implementing public policy broadly construed. The course readings emphasize formal approaches to this subject, while the assignments and discussion emphasize their application to real problems.

Other

• AREC 820 Applied Microeconomic Theory: A study of the application of economic theory to production economics and consumer demand systems. The course links static micro economic theory to the behavior of economic systems. This course includes a survey on the choice of functional form, the application of duality in demand theory and the use of Bayesian econometrics to impose inequality restrictions in system estimation. The course also examines several aspects of technological change and dynamic problems involving risk and uncertainty.
• ECON 804 Research in Econometrics: A research project serves as the primary tool to learn econometric techniques, but is augmented by a consideration of the theoretical aspects of econometrics.
• ECON 805 Mathematical Analysis in Economics: A study of the mathematical formulation and investigation of economic relationships. Topics include the theory of consumer demand, theory of the individual firm, input-output analysis, models of aggregate economic activity and economic growth.