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- Alumni Success
- Campus Development
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- Policies & Guidelines
- Academics
- Undergraduate
- Graduate Programs
- MA in Diplomacy and International Law
- MA in Global Communications
- MSc in Human Rights and Data Science
- MA in International Affairs
- MA in International Affairs, Conflict Resolution, and Civil Society Development
- MSc in International Management
- MSc in Strategic Brand Management
- Find Your Thesis Advisor
- Previous Programs
- Cultural Program
- Faculty
- Summer School
- Research Centers
- The Center for Critical Democracy Studies
- The Center for Writers and Translators
- The George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention
- The Joy and Edward Frieman Environmental Science Center
- The Center for Media, Communication & Global Change
- Departments
- Academic Resources
- Academic Affairs
- Academic Calendar
- Academic Resource Center
- Library
- Registrar's Office
- Teaching and Learning Center
- Employer Network
- Accessibility & Accommodation Services
- Quai D'Orsay Learning Commons
- Paris as Classroom
- ACE Center
- Admissions
- Student Life
- Campus
- Get Involved
- Paris
- Support Services
- Health & Well-being
- Digital Student Handbook
- News
- Events
- AUP Giving
- Housing | Fall 2023
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International Finance
Major Overview
Our mission is to prepare you to fully understand today’s economic and financial environment, while enabling you to evaluate and finance alternative investment opportunities and manage stellar portfolios. Your studies will be focused on the application of economics within financial and non-financial institutions and markets, particularly the optimal allocation of scarce financial assets, including money, loans, bonds, stocks, and currencies. You will also learn how to deal with potential challenges within finance like time, information, uncertainty, diversification, and hedging and asset management, all while concentrating on empirical predictions.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
The educational goals for this major are as follows:
- You will demonstrate critical thinking and the application of core competencies in business decision making.
- You will demonstrate an understanding of how firms operate in a global environment.
- You will demonstrate the ability to communicate convincingly based on data and conceptual frameworks, in writing and orally.
- You will work collaboratively to achieve stated organizational goals.
- You will understand the economic and financial environment.
- You will demonstrate competencies in the valuation of the firm, investment opportunities, and financial instruments on an international basis.
- You will master the fundamentals of portfolio creation.
Learning Environment
Our comprehensive program will help you master a variety of issues within the international economic environments of the past and present. Our seminars are designed to encourage hands-on activities as well as in-class participation, while introducing you to crucial business and management concepts, the role of market supply and demand, diverse topics within international financial markets, and the legal environment within which today’s businesses must operate.
Core Courses
The International Finance core courses, which you must take as part of the major requirements, will provide you with the tools you’ll need to ground your present and future studies.
Teams of student-managers compete in an integrated, international business simulation designed to introduce them to business concepts. Students will manage a company operating in the international action-capture camera and drones markets. Using a hands-on experiential approach, teams make management, marketing, human resources, operations, finance and corporate social responsibility decisions that allow them to meet their firm’s objectives over ten fiscal years. Students are graded on company performance, and on individual and group analysis of the situation at hand. Please note this course has a fee.
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Introduces the tools of statistical analysis. Combines theory with extensive data collection and computer-assisted laboratory work. Develops an attitude of mind accepting uncertainty and variability as part of problem analysis and decision-making. Topics include: exploratory data analysis and data transformation, hypothesis-testing and the analysis of variance, simple and multiple regression with residual and influence analyses.
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Introduces differential and integral calculus. Develops the concepts of calculus as applied to polynomials, logarithmic, and exponential functions. Topics include: limits, derivatives, techniques of differentiation, applications to extrema and graphing; the definite integral; the fundamental theorem of calculus, applications; logarithmic and exponential functions, growth and decay; partial derivatives. Appropriate for students in the biological, management, computer and social sciences.
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This course introduces students to the financial accounting cycle and financial reporting for corporations. Students learn how to measure and record accounting data and prepare financial statements. At the end of the course, students choose a company and do an analysis of their financial statements, comparing their company against a competitor company, using financial ratios.
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Focuses on the role played by relative market prices in our society and on the forces of market supply and demand in determining these prices. Since the actions of consumers and firms underlie supply and demand, the course studies in detail the behavior of these two groups.
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The course introduces students to basic Management/Organizational Behavior concepts and enables them to understand the attitude and behaviors on the individual level and the group level within organizations. Students will be enabled to use Organizational Behavior tools and theories to recognize organizational patterns within a complex social situation. Students will be provided with readings, lectures, and cases that provide a diverse and robust understanding of human interaction in organization.
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Examines the determinants of the levels of national income, employment, rates of interest, and prices. Studies in detail the instruments of monetary and fiscal policy, highlighting the domestic and international repercussions of their implementation.
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Examines finance as the practical application of economic theory and accounting data in the procurement and employment of capital funds. Applies the principles of strong fiscal planning and control to asset investment, and debt and equity financing decisions. Emphasizes sound leveraging in view of the time value of money, subject to the pernicious effects of taxation and inflation. BA 2002 recommended for simultaneous registration.
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This course explores the ethical issues that arise from the operation of business in a globalized and inter-connected economy. By applying the tools of theory, ethical analysis and personal reflection to a variety of real-life case studies, students will explore several disciplines of management practice, including marketing, operations, strategy, organizational behaviour, finance and accounting. Topical areas will be explored from multiple perspectives, including human rights, political involvement by business, sweatshop labour, the export of hazardous products, deceptive marketing practices, bribery, whistleblowing, religious/social discrimination, corporate governance, cross-cultural differences, sustainability and environmental issues, corporate social responsibility, and consumer society. The format of the course will be a series of interactive seminars and student participation is required. By the end of the course, students should have developed an organised, personally reflective approach to decision-making that can offer guidance when confronting difficult ethical dilemmas in both business and personal life.
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Following an introduction to the International Monetary System and Foreign Exchange Markets, students explore spot and spot-forward arbitrage. They also engage in a FX trading competition using a demo platform. Once students absorb the essentials of financial derivatives (options, futures and swaps), we move to the practical application of these tools. Hedging theories and a basic tool-kit assist students in completing more complex FX and interest rate hedging exercises and case studies. Each semester we explore selected topics, such as Private Equity or the Regulation of the Futures Market, in collaboration with guest speakers.
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Studies the economic functions and structures of financial asset markets, financial intermediaries, and money. It also presents the role of the central bank in macroeconomic performance of open economies.
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Students will examine the legal process and the legal environment within which business must operate, as well as the interrelationship of government and business. Students develop an understanding of the methods by which legal decisions are formulated as they affect both individual rights and business transactions.
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Briefly examines the great legal families in the world: Common Law, Civil Law, Socialist Law, and Islamic Law. Within the Civil Law family, emphasizes French Contract Law and then explores the law of the European Union. Studies the legal aspects of international business transactions and uses major international and European projects to examine the principles discussed.
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Introduces the processes and analytical tools necessary for investment decision-making. Provides the basic skills, modes of analysis and institutional background useful to work in the investment area of finance firms or as an individual investor. Students who successfully complete the course are expected to be able to work in the field or to continue their specialization in Security Analysis or Portfolio Management.
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This course is an introduction to applied computational methods for finance and the valuation of financial firms and elements of capital structure: equity, bonds, and options and additional methods for optimization of securities portfolios and hedging risk. We emphasize implementation and use selected models. Aimed at providing the necessary technical and analytical skills useful for graduate school work, working in financial firms or investment banks.
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Teams of student-managers compete in a complex international business simulation designed to allow them to demonstrate mastery of department-level, major and discipline specific learning objectives. The teams operate a company in the international athletic footwear industry. Using a hands-on experiential approach, teams make strategic management, marketing, human resources, operations, facilities, finance, and corporate social responsibility decisions over ten fiscal years. Students are evaluated on their company’s performance, but also on written individual and group analyses of the simulation and on a final comprehensive exam. Please note this course has a fee.
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One (1) four credit Finance elective or equivalent OR Economics/Math elective from the following list.
Treats applications in economics and computer science, limited to Euclidean n-space. Topics include: the linear structure of space, vectors, norms and angles, transformations of space, systems of linear equations and their applications, the Gauss-Jordan method, matrices, determinants, eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Uses Mathematica for graphics and algorithms.
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Examines probability in its various components and through its diverse applications. Topics include: combinatorial analysis, axioms of probability, discrete random variables and distributions & continuous random variables and probability density functions, joint distribution functions, law of large numbers. The statistical concepts of conditioning, independence and expectation will be highlighted, as well as the notion of moments. Selected applications will shed light on the use of probability in various fields.
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This course provides an analysis of trade theories and their monetary aspects in global and open economy. The course begins by explaining the rationale behind international trade and welfare gains that emanate from trade and proceeds to discuss the balance of payments accounts, price and output in an open economy, macroeconomic policy under different exchange rate regimes. A special emphasis is placed on the conduct of monetary and fiscal policy in an open economy, the balance of payment accounts and the determination of the exchange rate. Students will have the opportunity to get a more in-depth understanding of the origin and impact of monetary problems and financial crises in advanced and emerging economics (the United States, EU countries following Brexit, China and Latin America) using a policy approach.
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Introduces game theory as used in many different disciplines, with an emphasis on economics. The course will focus on finding Nash equilibrium of non-cooperative games. The reasonableness of various kinds of equilibria will also be discussed, as well as departures from the usual assumptions of rational behavior. Students will describe a situation as a game and solve for its equilibria.
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Includes an introduction to the linear regression model; a review of elementary statistics; the two-variable regression model in detail; the multiple regression model, its use, and problems arising from violations of its underlying assumptions; and an introduction to simultaneous-equation models.
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Applied Differential Equations takes the study of differential equations, begun in Calculus 1, to the next level, and further allows students a first meeting with difference equations. The first, and larger part of the course, deals with differential equations (DE's) -- linear and non-linear DE's; first and higer-order DE's and systems of DE's; ordinary DE's and partial DE's. Examples come from population dynamics (in various species), hydrostatic equations for water and air, wave equations (for example sound waves, water waves, seismic waves,...) The second part of the course looks at difference equations, with both time and space differencing connections with differentiation; solutions (numerically as well as algebraically); analysis of solutions in terms of convergence and stability. The one-way wave equation (advection equation) is looked at in more detail.
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Following an in-depth analysis of corporate ESG (Environmental, Social & Governance) ratings and impact measurement, students will create a Sustainable Investment Portfolio using these tools and risk/return analysis.Via hands-on involvement in an energy transformation project, students will gain key knowledge about locally based sustainability initiatives and their sources of financing.Students will also research, analyze and critique other prominent Sustainable Finance areas such as Micro Finance, Carbon Trading Schemes and Islamic Finance.
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Behavorial finance investigation is based on concepts of cognitive psychology decision theory. In addition, behavioral finance studies how real-life investors interpret and act on available information. Financial theories are dominated by efficient market theory assuming rational agents. he key assumption of financial models under this theory is the rational behavior of investors and other economic agents. Empirical observation demonstrates this assumption regularly is violated.Markets often are inefficient. Information disclosure is expensive, and accordingly is distributed asymmetrically. Heuristics may change the investors’ behavior and bias their decisions. Among biases are that each investment decision depends on our previous investment decisions: we are anchored by memory and experience and Bayesian approaches to the data are not of sufficient explanatory power to compensate for the remaining unknowns.