This course is designed to introduce new students in the economics program (freshmen and external and internal transfers) to the application of economic analysis in academia, business, government and the not-for-profit sector. Students will be exposed to the research and consulting activities undertaken by academic economists and economic practitioners as well as a discussion of the career outcomes of the alumni of the RIT economics program.

Game theory uses a mathematical approach to study situations of strategic interdependence, i.e., situations with two or more players in which each player's decision influences payoffs of other players and players are aware of this fact when making their decisions. Game theory has been applied to understand diverse economic, political and biological phenomena. We will study how to formulate situations of strategic interdependence as game theoretic models; how to explain/predict behavior of the parties involved, through the use of various equilibrium concepts; and/or identify guidelines for appropriate behavior. The concepts and methods will be illustrated with many examples. The objective is to introduce you to language of game theory and its methodology, and to develop analytical reasoning skills.

The objective of the course is to introduce students to computational modeling in economics. The course is intended for students who wish to learn what role computation can play in economics, how to create computational models for studying economic phenomena, and how to use these computational economic models to draw insights into economic phenomena. We will use programming languages such as Julia, Python and R for modeling and analysis.

This course registers the student’s completion of the capstone experience required for economics majors. The requirement can be fulfilled by either presenting a class paper at an approved on-campus or off-campus research conference or submitting a solo-authored or co-authored research paper to a peer-reviewed journal. Economics students experience conducting research and presenting their findings before an audience of their peers and professionals in the field. Students are sponsored by a faculty member, developing their pre-professional skills while learning how to do research first hand. Double-majors who satisfactorily complete a capstone experience in their primary major automatically fulfill the economics capstone experience requirement.

Co-op in a field related to Liberal Arts (at least 80 hours). Students will apply the accumulated knowledge, theory, and methods of the discipline to problem solving outside of the classroom.