Computational Economics

In many cases, there is not sufficient variation in historical data to understand the likely potential impacts of policy changes on the economy. In others, purely theoretical models of the economy may lack sufficient realism for policy decisionmaking.

This course builds on the foundations of economic theory and computational optimization methods to introduce practical programming-based tools for constructing and solving models of micro and macroeconomic interaction. Building on a foundation in the mathematics of optimization, we introduce models that are commonly used in policy analysis to answer questions about household behavior, economic growth, trade, social welfare, finance, and interfirm production networks.