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Reading List - Master of Advanced Studies in Economics

The document provides a reading list for students entering the Master of Advanced Studies in Economics program at KU Leuven. It outlines expectations for background knowledge in microeconomics, macroeconomics, and econometrics. It then provides recommendations for additional reading in these areas as well as mathematics and popular economics books to help prepare students.

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38 views

Reading List - Master of Advanced Studies in Economics

The document provides a reading list for students entering the Master of Advanced Studies in Economics program at KU Leuven. It outlines expectations for background knowledge in microeconomics, macroeconomics, and econometrics. It then provides recommendations for additional reading in these areas as well as mathematics and popular economics books to help prepare students.

Uploaded by

Hana C.
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Reading List – Master of Advanced Studies in Economics

The Master of Advanced Studies in Economics (MASE) is an advanced-level, research-oriented program


in economics. As such, students entering the MASE program are expected to have a sufficient
background in economics and econometrics at the level of the undergraduate Master of Economics at
KU Leuven or equivalent.

Students entering MASE are expected to have mastered microeconomics, macroeconomics and
econometrics at the level covered in the undergraduate courses D0C08A Advanced Microeconomics I,
D0C07A Advanced Macroeconomics I, and D0C09A Econometric Methods and Models. Students who
have not taken this course are strongly encouraged to engage in the necessary self-study of the
textbooks and materials used in those courses. The most up-to-date information can be found on the
course pages or by contacting the lecturers.

For the benefit of those students who come from a different university or from a non-economic
background, or for those students from the Master of Economics who wish to prepare for the MASE, the
list below offers some additional suggested readings. In addition to being useful materials for self-study,
many of these books can also come in handy during the MASE.

Micro

At a bare minimum, prospective MASE students should master the material in e.g. H. Varian,
“Intermediate Microeconomics: A Modern Approach” or equivalent textbooks.

In terms of game theory, a good informal exposition can be found in A. Dixit and B. Nalebuff, “The Art of
Strategy”. For a more formal introduction, see R. Gibbons, “A Primer in Game Theory”.

More advanced expositions of microeconomics can be found in H. Varian, “Microeconomic Analysis”,


Reny and Jehle, “Advanced Microeconomic Theory” or Mas-Colell, Whinston, and Green,
“Microeconomic Theory”.

Macro

Prospective MASE students are expected to master the material in e.g. Sorensen and Whitta-Jacobsen,
“Introducing Advanced Macroeconomics” or equivalent textbooks. A more advanced textbook is D.
Romer, “Advanced Macroeconomics”.

For a good introduction to growth theory and related issues, see David Weil, “Economic Growth”.

Econometrics

Students entering MASE are expected to master the material in e.g. Stock and Watson, “Introduction to
Econometrics” or equivalent textbooks.

Other useful books include M. Verbeek, “A Guide to Modern Econometrics”, or Cameron and Trivedi’s
“Microeconometrics” and the companion book “Microeconometrics using Stata”, which clearly explains
how microeconometric techniques can be implemented in the Stata statistical software package used by
many economists.

A clear exposition of many econometric techniques can be found in Angrist and Pischke, “Mostly
Harmless Econometrics”.

Mathematics

Although MASE does not have any explicit mathematics courses, a strong quantitative background is
required. A standard undergraduate textbook is Simon and Blume, “Mathematics for Economists”.
Another useful source is the well-written book by Wainwright and Chiang, “Fundamental Methods of
Mathematical Economics”.

Students entering MASE should at least master basic calculus (functions, derivatives, integrals),
optimization (first and second order conditions, constrained optimization using Lagrange multipliers,
constrained optimization using Kuhn-Tucker conditions), the basics of linear algebra (systems of
equations, matrices, determinants, eigenvalues), Taylor approximations, and the implicit function
theorem.

Popular books

Since MASE is an advanced economics program, students are expected to have already acquired a good
“intuition” about economic phenomena. For students coming from a non-economic background, one
suggestion is to read some good popular books on economics which explain fundamental concepts in a
non-technical way. These may help students to develop their economic intuition and background
knowledge.

- For a relatively long list of titles, see e.g. the American Economic Association’s list here:
http://www.aeaweb.org/students/Books.php .
- A fun first introduction to economics is Yoram Bauman’s “Cartoon Introduction to Economics”,
available in two “volumes” (on microeconomics and macroeconomics, respectively).
- John Cassidy’s book “Why Markets Fail” offers a well-written account of the development of
modern economic theory on general equilibrium, efficient financial markets, asymmetric
information, and much more.
- The books by Tim Harford (e.g. “The Undercover Economist”, “Adapt”) are full of interesting
examples of economic principles.
- Nate Silver’s book “The Signal and the Noise” gives an intuitive introduction to uncertainty,
statistics and the problem of drawing conclusions from real-world data (Silver received an
honorary doctorate from the KU Leuven in 2013).
- Many interesting books have been written on economic growth and development, see e.g.
Acemoglu and Robinson, “Why Nations Fail” and Banerjee and Duflo, “Poor Economics”.
- Students may also wish to read about current economic events in periodicals such as The
Economist.
For MASE students who wish to choose an advanced elective without having taken the undergraduate
course (e.g. Advanced International Trade Theory, Advanced Development Economics), it might be
useful to engage in self-study of the relevant undergraduate materials. As the MASE is designed to
introduce students to the state of the art of research, students are usually expected to know the
relevant basic facts about the field. These are typically covered in undergraduate textbooks or in
specialized popular books.

Finally, since MASE coincides with the first year of the doctoral program in economics at KU Leuven,
much of the advice available online for new PhD students in economics is also potentially useful for
MASE students (although the requirements of U.S. graduate programs are often different from those of
MASE).

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