2. Teaching Materials

Data Analysis for Decision Making (MBA 610), Spring 2014

One of the sources of successful management is the ability to find the information needed, to understand it, and to use it effectively. This course teaches how to seek and analyze data for managerial decision making. Topics include decision tree analysis, probability theory and applications, optimization, regression analysis and forecasting with applications in different areas of managerial decisions. Students who did not take a Statistics class as an undergraduate are responsible for attending the Quantitative Methods/Statistics (MBA 506) Foundational Literacy Workshop prior to enrolling in this class.

At the end of this course, you will be able to do the following:

• Formulate a business problem for decision making

• Seek, collect, analyze and interpret data

• Conduct rigorous data analysis to improve decision making

• Use Excel to help you analyze data and present the results of data analysis in a well-organized way.

This is a very useful paper for empirical research in social sciences.

Data Sources (These are good data sources for your term paper)

• Enigma : a cool collection of data sets

• Quandl: another cool collection of data sets

• US government data

• Prof. Stock (Harvard) and Watson (Princeton)'s Textbook Data and Program

• Data and Program Archive from Some Top Journals

• A List of economic and financial data sets

• US Census Bureau Data

• Development Economics Data (very comprehensive and up-to-date)

• World Bank Data

How to use Stata command "wbopendata" to extract data from World Bank? Please see:

http://data.worldbank.org/developers/apps/wbopendata

*Sample Stata Program to extract annual GDP growth rate from: World Bank

*If you use Stata12, please use the following code:

ssc install wbopendata

clear

wbopendata, language(en - English) indicator (ny.gdp.pcap.kd.zg) long

*If your Stata version is lower than Stata 12, please use the following code:

ssc install wbopendata

clear

wbopendata, language(en - English) indicator (ny.gdp.pcap.kd.zg)

reshape long yr@, i(countrycode) j(year)

rename yr growth

• "Doing Business" Research Data

• Federal Reserve Economic Data

*Sample Stata Program to extract monthly CPI data (since 1913) from: Federal Reserve Data

ssc install freduse

freduse CPIAUCNS,clear

• St. Louis Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)

• Bureau of Economic Analysis Data

• US Statistical Abstract

• US Housing Index Data

• "Gapminder" Data

• Ohio State University's Financial Data Set List

• Prof. Aswath Damodaron (NYU)'s Data

• Prof. Andrei Shleifer (Harvard)'s Data

• Prof. Rafael La Porta (Dartmouth)'s Data

• Prof. Robert Barro (Harvard)'s Data

• Prof. Daron Acemoglu (MIT)'s Data

• Prof. Nathan Nunn (Harvard)'s Data

• Prof. Justin Wolfers (Wharton)'s Data

• Prof. Andrew Metrick (Yale)'s Data

• Prof. Gerard Hoberg and Prof. Gordon Phillips (Maryland)'s Data on industry classification and concentration

• Prof. Thomas Holmes (Minnesota, Twin Cities)'s Data

• Prof. Judson Caskey (UCLA)'s Data

• Prof. Ross Levine (Brown)'s Data

• Prof. Joshua Angrist (MIT)'s Data

• Prof. Byoung-Hyoun Hwang (Purdue)'s Data and Code

• Prof. Lucian Bebchuk (Harvard)'s Data on Corporate Governance

• Prof. Shangjin Wei (Columbia)'s Data and code

• Prof. Yu Yuan (Wharton)'s Data on investor sentiment in multiple countries

• Prof. Danling Jiang (Florida State)'s Data on behavioral finance

• Prof. Daniel Johnson (Colorado)'s Data on International Patents

• Journal of Money, Credit and Banking's Data

• Journal of Applied Econometrics's Data

• Prof. Nancy Qian (Yale)'s Data on the Chinese economy

• Prof. Ebenstein (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)'s Data on the Chinese economy

• China Health and Nutrition Survey

• China Household Income Project 2002

• China Statistical Yearbook

• Harvard Data on Chinese History

Advanced Managerial Finance (MBA 691), Fall 2013

We will learn analytical techniques in managerial finance by conducting case studies in various areas of managerial finance: IPO (Initial Public Offering), M&A (Merger and Acquisition), corporate governance, balancing financial goals with social responsibilities, dealing with active investors, estimating cost of capital, capital budgeting, setting and changing capital structure, setting and changing dividend and stock buyback policies, etc.

Economics of China, Spring 2013

This course is designed to enable you to gain deeper insights into the second largest economy in the world—China. China is also the fastest-growing major economy in the world. This course will equip you with knowledge on the following aspects of China: (1) brief history, growth and inequality; (2) rural reforms; (3) State-Owned Enterprise (SOE) reforms; (4) entrepreneurs and labor markets; (5) financial development; (6) exchange rate policy and (7) political economy (if time permits). We will hold three class debates (the topics and schedule are in the second page of the syllabus), and everyone will participate in all the debates. We will conduct five business case studies, and everyone will participate in all the business case studies. We will divide the class into five groups, and each group will lead one business case study.

I would like to recommend an interesting lecture by Prof. Nancy Qian from Yale about the Chinese economy available here. I would like to recommend another interesting lecture by Prof. Keyu Jin from London School of Economics about the Chinese economy available here.

I would like to recommend a great technical paper in American Economic Review titled "Growing like China". I would like to recommend five excellent survey papers in Journal of Economic Perspectives here. I would like to recommend a special issue of Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics on Chinese economy at here. For a good survey on China's political economy, please read Xu, Chenggang (2011). The fundamental institutions of China's reforms and development. Journal of Economic Literature 49, 1076–1151. Please also read an excellent paper in Journal of Financial Economics by Allen, Qian and Qian (2005) on the legal and financial systems in China: Law, finance and economic growth in China. In addition to these excellent and widely-cited papers, we will also read quite a few influential academic papers in detail and conduct business case studies in this class. The papers will be from AER, JPE, QJE and top field journals (there are two very interesting recent papers about China in JPE and QJE: Wei, S., Zhang, X., 2011. The competitive saving motive: Evidence from rising sex ratios and savings rates in China . Journal of Political Economy, 119 ,511-564. Kuhn, P., Shen, K..Gender discrimination in job ads: Evidence from China. forthcoming in Quarterly Journal of Economics.)

Here is an intriguing talk by Dr. Wei, Shangjin about his paper in Journal of Political Economy. Here is a nice short lecture about institutional reform in China by a professor at Columbia Business School.

Your group presentations and class debates are important components of this class. More information about this course will be available at the Moodle website.

Here is a cool website called "Connected China."

Investment and Portfolio Analysis, Spring 2013

Students in Investment and Portfolio Analysis class: You can download the midterm exam for the same course in 2012 here, and the final exam for the same course in 2012 here. We emphasize practical applications of analytical techniques. Your practice at www.wallstreetsurvivor.com is an important component of the class. More information about this course will be available at the Moodle website.

Econometrics, Spring 2013

Students in Econometrics class: You can download the midterm exam for the same course in 2012 here. The final exam for the same course in 2012 is available here, and the last problem set for the same course in 2012 is available here. We emphasize causal inference techniques such as Instrumental Variable, GMM, Difference in Difference (natural experiments), Propensity Score Matching and Regression Discontinuity. More information about this course will be available at the Moodle website.

In terms of statistical packages, we will mainly use Stata and Microsoft Excel in this course. However, please feel free to choose the software you will use for your term project.

Textbook

Stock & Watson: Introduction to Econometrics (3rd Edition)

Required readings:

1. Laeven, L., Levine, R., 2008. Complex ownership structures and corporate valuations. Review of Financial Studies 21, 579-604. (We will replicate all results in the paper in a lab session.)

2.Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S., Robinson, J. A., Yared, P., 2008. Income and Democracy. American Economic Review 98, 808-42. (Focuses: Instrumental variable and fixed effects models) (We will replicate all results in the paper in a lab session.)

3. Bennedsen, M., Nielsen, K. M., Pérez-González, M. F., Wolfenzon, D.. 2007. Inside the family firm: the role of families in succession decisions and performance. Quarterly Journal of Economics 122, 647-91. (Focus: Instrumental variable)

-------------I would like to recommend an interesting article in Wall Street Journal about Instrumental Variable Approach: Is an economist qualified to solve puzzle of autism?