Thinking Through Models

Catalog description

Models of agents, behaviors, mechanisms and markets are essential to the way economists think about and describe the world. This course examines several of the models that have been most crucial to the development of economic thought from the early nineteenth century through to the present. Students will learn to understand how economists have used models as tools of inquiry and prediction, assess the functional elements of these models and consider how accurately they map on to the empirical phenomena they describe. Open only to students in the Focus Program.