Course Description

This is a six-week (3-credit) graduate course in applied numerical methods in
economics. The class meets three times a week and students are expected to
solve weekly assignments. Completing the assignments is essential to
understanding how to use numerical techniques in practice. The programming
software/language to be used in the course will me Matlab, which is available
in the computer lab of the Department of Economics.

Economists use mathematical models to solve economic problems. Given
an economic problem, the solution strategy in Economics involves formulating
the problem in mathematical terms and, once the mathematical
solution is available, interpreting that solution in economic terms. This course
focuses on the use of numerical techniques to solve the mathematical
problems typically found in economic problems.

A rich and growing set of problems in economics and finance, specially
those that incorporate dynamic and stochastic aspects of economic decisions,
cannot be solved analytically using standard mathematical techniques.
To obtain insights from the increasingly complex economic models that
lack analytical solutions, economists appeal instead to numerical solutions.
This requires translating mathematical problems into a numerical language and
solving the numerical version of these problems appealing to numerical
techniques that have long been used by physical scientists.

Since physical scientists also share the solution-strategy above and since the
mathematical problems they came across are similar to the mathematical
problems economists come across, the material taught in this class might
be of interest to students in sciences different from economics. 

Students completing this course will be able to: 1) employ numerical
techniques to differentiate and integrate functions; 2) solve numerically
system of equations; 3) solve numerically the static and dynamic
optimization problems commonly discussed in almost all fields of economics;
4) employ numerical methods to solve functional equations.

See the course syllabus for more details about this class.