Specialization in Finance & Policy

The Center for Economic Policy seeks to educate students and wider audiences about economic policy and markets, providing students with training in economic tools to analyze the regulatory and legal framework in which markets operate. Markets and government policies regulating them have always been central to economic growth, social welfare, and civil society, with policy decisions and legal frameworks inextricably tied to economic outcomes.

Whether it is the government debt consolidation undertaken by the South Sea Company (and Bank of England) in the early 1700s or the rise in mortgage debt and the 2008 financial crisis, financial markets and their functioning are inextricably linked with both household behavior and larger economic outcomes and policy decisions. The core specialization courses teach basic finance tools necessary for understanding financial instruments and markets. Electives provide a broader range of topics related to household finance, international finance, and banking.

Learning Outcomes

Harris students earning the specialization often go into either the government financial sector (state & local government or central banking) or the private financial sector. Both place a high premium on the following skills and attributes:

Subject-area or field knowledge: Knowledge and familiarity with financial markets, financial instruments, and finance theory

Analytical and quantitative skills: Data analytics, statistics, programming

Practical application of the knowledge and skills to real-world situations

This specialization teaches the field knowledge but also builds on the substantive analytic training that all Harris students acquire in their core statistics and economics courses, while trying to focus on the practical applications.

Harris specializations function as areas of focus within the degree. Specializations assume knowledge of the 6-course Harris Core and build upon that foundation with coursework in specific policy areas or technical skills.

Application Process

The specialization is open to Harris Public Policy graduate students only. Please indicate your intent to pursue this specialization using the Harris Specialization Declaration Form.

For specialization registration questions, please reach out to harrisregistration@uchicago.edu.

Planning for the Specialization

For information on which quarter(s) each course will be offered see the Harris Courses page and filter by specialization.

Specialization Requirements

The specialization requires completion of two required courses, along with one additional elective course for a total of three courses. Students must achieve at least a B- grade in each course. No specialization course may be taken on a pass/fail grading basis.

Required course

Students must complete one of the following courses to fulfill the requirement:

PPHA 36101 Introduction to Finance and Policy
PPHA 42510 Applied Financial Management
BUSN 35000 Investments
BUSN 35001 Introductory Finance
- note: can only satisfy one of the requirements

Required course

Students must complete one of the following courses to fulfill the requirement:

PPHA 34410 Corporate Finance
BUSN 35001 Introductory Finance
- note: can only satisfy one of the requirements
BUSN 35200 Corporate Finance

Elective courses

Students must complete one of the following courses to fulfill the requirement:

PPHA 34500 Macroeconomics for Public Policy
PPHA 35310 International Finance and Policy
PPHA 36150 Introduction to Sustainable and Impact Investing
PPHA 36160 Sustainability Principles, ESG Risk, and Value Creation in Organizations
PPHA 42521 History of Financial Crises
PPHA 42535 Banking Regulation and Management
PPHA 60000 Policy Lab (with permission of the Specialization Director)
BUSN 30000 Financial Accounting
BUSN 30130 Financial Statement Analysis
BUSN 30131 Advanced Financial Analysis and Valuation of Global Firms
BUSN 33050 Macroeconomics and the Business Environment
BUSN 33320 Financing the Grid: Valuing Transmission & Storage Capacity
BUSN 33502 International Financial Policy
BUSN 34101 Entrepreneurial Finance and Private Equity
BUSN 34219 Institutional Private Capital Investing
BUSN 35126 Quantitative Portfolio Management
BUSN 35150 Advanced Investments
BUSN 35201 Cases in Financial Management
BUSN 35210 International Corporate Finance
BUSN 35214 Debt Distress & Restructuring
BUSN 36106 Managerial Decision Modeling
BUSN 41203 Financial Econometrics
FINM 32600 Computing for Finance in C++
FINM 32700 Advanced Computing for Finance
FINM 37400 Fixed Income
Not offered in 26-27
- PPHA 34241 Household Finance: Theory and Application

Recommended Co-Curricular Activity

Students are recommended to attend two events in the “Harris Speakers on Economic Policy and Markets” or “History of Chicago Economics” speaker series during their second year.