ECON 334 - Economics of Information and Organizations

Units: 3
Information economics in issues in management and governance. Application of agency theory, adverse selection, rent-seeking, and learning models to optimal design of incentives and organizations. Monitoring mechanisms in the US financial system, evolution of corporate structures, business models, and entrepreneurship.

Prerequisites: ECON 200.
Equivalent Quarter Course: ECON 3560.
Possible Instructional Methods: Entirely On-ground.
Grading: A-F grading only.
Course Typically Offered: Fall Alternate Years

Student Learning Outcomes - Upon successful completion of this course students will be able to:

Identify instances of moral hazard and adverse selection and propose ways to address these problems;
Solve for optimal contracts under symmetric and asymmetric information in some specific settings and interpret them as incentive schemes;
Find pooling and separating equilibria in simple games with uncertainty and relate them to the economic value and cost of information;
Describe incentive problems inherent in the separation of ownership and control in public corporations, and the role of internal governance mechanisms and markets for corporate debt and equity in mitigating them;
Recognize examples of signaling and screening in labor and financial markets.