Computational Economics

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Econ 5901 is a masters-level course in computational economics. Computational economics can be defined as the application of mathematics and computing technology to the solution of economic problems. This course provides students with a solid foundation in some of the major analytical methods and software tools that can be applied to computational economics problems. The course has three principal dimensions: (1) discussion of many of the tools of numerical analysis that have proven especially useful in computational economics; (2) students' coding of assigned problem sets in a programming language of their choice; and (3) application of numerical analysis and computing technology to the solution of forward-looking (rational expectations) macroeconomic models. This course is hands-on: Students will write programs to explore numerical methods or to solve economic problems using their choice of a range of languages commonly employed in computational economics. Econ 5901 is not a course in coding--an objective is for students to develop their programming skills by actually coding--but the instructor will provide students with feedback on their code. Recently, all students used Python. The instructor will use Mathematica, Python, R, and Octave or Matlab.