Finance-Economics

The Finance-Economics program is designed for students planning to pursue academic careers in finance or who want to use financial concepts and findings in their work as consultants, investment analysts and other business endeavours.

The emphasis in the finance program is on the development, refinement, and extension of theoretical structures and the problems with these structures, and on the empirical investigation of financial relationships. In addition to the theoretical basis of finance, students gain an understanding of statistical and econometric methods, knowledge of the financial and capital market environment and an awareness of major current issues facing financial managers.

Students generally complete their required course work in their two years of study and begin full-time thesis research activities in their third. Although students take two courses in common with other first year students (Foundations of Management Thought and International Business), courses offered by the Economics Department at Western are substituted for the two business statistics and research methods seminars. In the second year, students take a series of elective courses including four special field seminars in finance. Electives are chosen to fit the student's research interests, career goals and past academic training.

Business 801 a/b: Foundations of Finance. The first core seminar in finance introduces the mathematics of portfolio theory, the Capital Asset Pricing Model and, market efficiency. The focus will be on the mathematical tools used in each of these areas.

Business 811 a/b: Empirical Methods in Financial Economics. This course represents an advanced study of asset pricing and other empirical techniques frequently used in financial economics. Focus is on the techniques used most often in the analysis of financial markets and how they are applied to actual market data.

Business 821 a/b: Corporate Finance. The third seminar provides a broad overview of empirical research in Finance. Students will be required to complete and present a short empirical research project as part of this seminar.

Business 831 a/b: Applied Research. The fourth seminar provides students with the opportunity to interact with faculty doing research in diverse areas of financial economics. The seminar is designed to develop an understanding of the various research methodologies used in different areas of financial economics. Students will be required to complete one mini-project.