Courses

The purpose of this course is to provide a basic introduction to accounting, including the
foundations of accounting concepts, the underlying mechanics, and the overall perspective required
to become intelligent users of accounting information. The course will focus on the main
financial statements, the nature of accrual measurement, and the information perspective. In addition,
we will explore some accounting methods in detail, such as revenue recognition, assets,
liabilities, and equity.
The overarching perspective is that accounting reports provide information that is useful for
a variety of purposes. In the course, I will also provide insights into how the financial markets
use accounting information to evaluate executives, predict future stock returns, assess firms’
riskiness, and allocate society’s resources to their most productive uses.

Prerequisites: STAT UN1201, ECON UN3211 Intermediate Microeconomics and ECON UN3213 Intermediate Macroeconomics. Equivalent to ECON UN3025. Institutional nature and economic function of financial markets. Emphasis on both domestic and international markets (debt, stock, foreign exchange, Eurobond, Eurocurrency, futures, options, and others). Principles of security pricing and portfolio management; the capital asset pricing model and the efficient markets hypothesis.

Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 or the equivalent. Introduction to the principles of money and banking. The intermediary institutions of the American economy and their historical developments, current issues in monetary and financial reform.

Uncertainty is ubiquitous and information about that uncertainty plays a key role in economic
decision-making and exchange. In this course, we will first consider how individuals and society
can manage uncertainty. We will then focus on how economic relationships may suffer from
some parties not having all the information that is relevant to their decision-making. We will see
how these kinds of information asymmetries invite lying and cheating. We will also study how
parties can structure their agreements to address the problems that such information asymmetries
create.

Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213. This course examines labor markets through the lens of economics. In broad terms, labor economics is the study of the exchange of labor services for wages—a category that takes in a wide range of topics. Our objective in this course is to lay the foundations for explaining labor market phenomena within an economic framework and subsequently apply this knowledge-structure to a select set of questions. Throughout this process we will discuss empirical research, which will highlight the power (as well as the limitations) of employing economic models to real-world problems. By the end of this course we will have the tools/intuition to adequately formulate and critically contest arguments concerning labor markets.

Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213. Equivalent to ECON UN4500. The theory of international trade, comparative advantage and the factor endowments explanation of trade, analysis of the theory and practice of commercial policy, economic integration. International mobility of capital and labor, the North-South debate.

An introduction to the enormous diversity of life on Earth. From bacteria to mammals, this course will survey species diversity, with an emphasis on ecological interactions and conservation. The course will also use basics of genetics and evolutionary biology to explore how diversity is generated and maintained. No previous knowledge of science is assumed. Fulfills a science requirement for most Columbia and GS undergraduates.

Water covers the majority of the earth’s surface but what of the life in these waters? Rivers, wetlands, lakes, estuaries and oceans provide habitat for an extraordinary diversity of animals. This course explores the amazing array of aquatic animals that occupy both freshwater and marine ecosystems as well as the natural and human activities that impact their survival. No previous knowledge of science is assumed. Fulfills the science requirement for most Columbia and GS undergraduates.

This course will introduce some of the most fascinating texts of the first eight hundred years of English literature, from the period of Anglo-Saxon rule through the Hundred Years’ War and beyond—roughly, 700–1500 CE. We’ll hit on some texts you’ve heard of – Beowulf and selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales – while leaving time for some you may not have encountered – Marie de France’s Lais and Margery of Kempe’s Book. Along the way, we’ll also hone skills of reading, writing, and oral expression crucial to appreciating and discussing literature in nuanced, supple ways. 

If you take this course, you’ll discover how medieval literature is both a mirror and a foil to modern literature. You’ll explore the plurilingual and cross-cultural nature of medieval literary production and improve (or acquire!) your knowledge of Middle English. Plus, you’ll flex your writing muscles with two papers.

In contemporary American culture, legal practice and literary studies share a commitment to careful use of language, rigorous interpretation, and a deep and imaginative engagement with meaning. Scholars and practitioners have been debating for decades how the two practices can reinforce each other, improve each other, critique each other, and refute each other. (As this debate shows, both communities also love to argue.) In this course, we will read and discuss a classic set of literary texts that speak to certain preoccupations within the legal tradition. We will also look at certain debates and controversies within legal discourse to see how the tools and insights of literary and cultural analysis can change our perspective. We won’t be focusing on literary history nor legal doctrine – no previous knowledge of either is required. Instead, we will look at texts where shared concerns – about interpretation, about evidence, about empathy, and about justice and fairness – allow us to use both literary and legal thinking to advance our own understanding of these ongoing debates.

A reading-intensive, condensed study of one of the English language’s great novelists of consciousness, who by renouncing omniscient narration developed an idiosyncratic style, and influential techniques, through which to chart the shapes, and limits, of modern subjectivity. We will read some of James’s most popular shorter works— short stories, novellas, and two short novels— as a way of surveying, within seven weeks, his characteristic interests: how we know (and don’t know) our own desires; the moral peril of idealizing innocence, and the equal dangers of knowingness; what a society stratified by social class does to our sense of ourselves; what “evil” might be in a secular world.