This course is designed to introduce students to some of the foundational ideas and theories in financial economics. It has two broad components. The first component develops the core ideas of modern portfolio theory. The second component focuses on security valuation. The course covers some of the most vital and influential concepts in financial economics: the Markowitz Portfolio Selection Model, Index Models, the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and its variants, Arbitrage Pricing Theory, the Efficient Market Hypothesis and the Black-Scholes option pricing formula.
Prerequisites: ECO 2400 (Econometrics)