Finance

Climate finance, development finance, infrastructure finance, municipal finance, international finance, banking, housing finance, corporate finance, investments, and financial regulation are all functions and applications of finance. This course provides the financial concepts, techniques, and instruments that are essential to understand, utilize and contribute to any of these areas. The course emphasizes an intuitive, logically rigorous understanding of the theory and practice of financial markets and institutions, illustrating the concepts through examples and cases drawn from diverse settings. The topics covered in this course include the principle of arbitrage, the trade-off between risk and return, the pricing of stocks and bonds, the term structure of interest rates, market efficiency, derivative securities, risk management, and real options. Case discussions illustrate applications that include green bonds, raising finance, pension funds, utility regulation, investment funds, currency risk management, weather insurance, privatization, bank deposit insurance, and securitization.