Unit information: Quantitative Methods for Economics, Finance and Management in 2017/18

Unit name	Quantitative Methods for Economics, Finance and Management
Unit code	ECONM1012
Credit points	15
Level of study	M/7
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12)
Unit director	Dr. Crespo
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	School of Economics
Faculty	Faculty of Social Sciences and Law

Description including Unit Aims

An introduction to quantitative methods for economics, finance and management including statistics and econometrics. The first part of the course concentrates on basic statistical techniques which are required for the study of econometrics in the second part of the course. Although a number of key theoretical concepts are introduced, the emphasis is on applying statistical and econometric techniques to applied problems in economics, finance and management.

Unit aims:

1. To give students an understanding of basic concepts in statistics, which are used in economic and financial theory and form a foundation of econometrics.
2. A grounding in basic econometric techniques using STATA which will be extended in the unit on Applied Empirical Accounting & Finance and enable students to use these techniques in their dissertation.
3. To critically engage with published econometric results.

Intended Learning Outcomes

At the end of the unit:

1) Students will be able to explain, discuss and use fundamental ideas in statistics; expectations, moments, uni and bi-variate distributions and estimation and hypothesis testing.

2) Students will be able to explain and discuss the appropriate application of the most widely-used econometric tools such as OLS; to be able to interpret econometric models; and to interpret simple estimation and hypothesis testing procedures, all using STATA.

3) Students will be able to critically engage with texts and journal articles which involve econometric work and recognise the problems which researchers are faced with when dealing with real data.

Teaching Information

16 hours of lectures (whole-group sessions to introduce material)

4 exercise lectures (whole-group sessions to consolidate material and provide feedback on exercises)

4 classes (small-group sessions)

In a typical week there will be three hours of large-group teaching and one hour of small-group teaching

Assessment Information

Summative assessment

2½ (two-and-a-half) hour closed book exam.

The exam will contain a mixture of questions, with students required to answer some from each type. Questions are typicaly long multi-part questions, with different parts of a questions assessing different ILOs:

• Algebraic problem-solving questions tests students’ understanding of statistical and econometric concepts (ILOs 1 and 2);
• Short verbal-response questions test their knowledge of how to use particular estimators or tests and in what contexts they are appropriate (ILOs 1, 2 and 3);
• Questions with examples of econometric results assess students’ ability to interpret and empirical questions (ILO 2).

A small amount of the material involves basic problem-solving or simple interpretation and can be assessed by multiple choice questions and we may use MCQs to assess up to 25% of the marks.

Formative assessment

Pencil-and-paper exercises (some of which will be marked by class tutors and returned with feedback)

Supplemented by Electronic assessment to test basic skills.

Reading and References

• Stock, J. H. and M.W. Watson (2012) Introduction to Econometrics, Third Edition, Global Edition, Pearson Education, Inc.
• Cortinhas, C. and Black, K. (2012) Statistics for Business and Economics, First European Edition, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
• Gujurati, D.N. Essentials of Econometrics, McGraw-Hill, New York, 3^rd edition, 2006