Elective Courses

The organization component of this course discusses different theories of the firm, including the property rights approach and the incomplete contracting model. It forms the basic framework that is used to understand how various decisions are made within a firm. The incomplete contracting model can be further extended to study financial decisions such as capital structure, bankruptcy, and corporate voting. The strategy component uses game theory to understand how firms formulate strategies to 2 cope with different competitive forces. Cases are used to illustrate how these strategies work. Examples include the meet-the-competition and most-favored-customer contractual clauses. 

This course focuses on financial decisions in the modern corporation. Topics include: capital budgeting, cost of capital, capital structure, dividend policy, public offerings, and incentives and contacting problems. There will also be some treatment of mergers and acquisitions, and corporate governance. The objective of the course is to integrate these various topics into standard theories of risk and return and the valuation of assets in order to provide a theoretical framework for considering corporate finance problems and issues, with an understanding of how it applies to the real world.

This course will examine the progresses and challenges of China's rapid economic growth toward one of the largest economies in the world and its deepening integration into the global trade and financial systems. It will focus on China's interactions with the global economy and their domestic and international implications. The topics will include: Review of China's foreign trade and investment; reform, opening, growth and efficiency of China's domestic and external sectors and their impacts on the structure of China's balance of payments; China's currency and monetary policies and their impacts on the domestic and internal trade and finance; China's capital market reform and development and their domestic and international implications; China's role in maintaining international financial order.

This course covers topics pertinent to the development of low-income countries: economic growth, measurements of economic inequality, inequality and development and their inter-connections; poverty and under-nutrition, population growth and economic development, rural and urban, markets in agriculture, land, labor, credit and insurance, international trade, and trade policy. The course also teaches how to use data to conduct development analyses such as poverty assessments and impact analysis of development projects.

This course develops a solid understanding of environmental economics. The course covers important environmental issues including overuse of the environment (such as overfishing and excessive air pollution emissions) and too little provision of environmental public goods (such as preservation of endangered species habitats and investment on biodiversity). This course is designed to cover an indepth discussion of an economic approach to environmental problems in order to show how factors such as property rights and transaction-cost considerations can encourage efficient natural resource use through environmental markets. For environmentalists, this course also offers concrete solutions to illustrate the importance of environmental entrepreneurship.

This is a course in money and banking at the masters or first-year graduate level. It discusses the role of money and the banking system in the economy and how they affect aggregate economic activity like inflation, interest rates and output growth. Topics include theories of money demand and supply, theories of interest rates, issues related to conduct of monetary policy, such as targets and indicators, rules versus discretion, time inconsistency, credit market imperfections, banking crisis, bank regulation, deposit insurance, among many others.

The course introduces behavioural economics and tries to keep it in perspective. Behavioural economics and rational models of economics are considered to be complementary instead of competing. Rational models are covered in the course to provide us a solid background to appreciate the contributions of behavioural economics. Behavioural economics helps us better understand decision-making under certainty, judgment under risk and uncertainty, decision-making under risk and uncertainty, and intertemporal choice. Although rational models are not perfectly consistent with actual behaviour, they can be used to show how choice and decision can be improved.

This course introduces the science and art of building and using econometric models in the analysis of business strategy. It aims to equip business and economics students to understand and appreciate econometric analysis in economic and business strategy analysis, and to provide students with an understanding of three widely used techniques in modern econometrics: randomized control trials, regression discontinuity, and differences-in-differences.

This course focuses on modern history of China and the world from perspectives of transnational and shared experience. It will explain how China becomes China with especial focus on the following topics: 1. forced transformation from a civilization to a nation-state; 2. Wars and peace and China’s struggles; 3. Chinese and Americans: a shared history; 4. Body, mind, and sports: Chinese shared experiences with the past and the world; 5. How “China” becomes today’s China and how Chinese become Chinese. It is crucial for anyone to know this kind of history in today’s world, and it seems more important if one wants to become a leader in business world. Without a deep understanding of the past, one cannot move ahead in the future.

The goal of this course is to equip students with a practical skill of proposing nudging solutions to achieve desire outcomes in commercial and policy making contexts; and testing the effectiveness of these solutions by experimentation (aka A/B Testing). Nudging is a concept rooted in behavioral economics and choice architecture, which involves subtly influencing people's decisions or behavior without restricting their freedom of choice.

This course is to introduce modern AI technology and its principles, and to provide real experience of applying AI technology to finance and economics problems. The course aims to help students understand how to apply AI techniques in quantitative finance analysis and risk management.

This course offers a rigorous and accessible introduction to financial economics and investment at a graduate level. Its aim is to provide students with the essential economic theory that forms the foundation for understanding finance and investment analysis, as well as a basic understanding of financial institutions, financial instruments, and asset markets. Moreover, it strives to bridge the gap between financial economic theory and its real-world application in the investment domain.

The course aims to provide students with practical knowledge and workplace skillsets shared by practitioners from various commercial and industrial sectors for the professional development and career advancement of students. Trending topics and current issues will be covered to equip students with the mindset and calibre for the challenges they are going to come across at workplace. With an emphasis on practice, the course instructors will deliver in-depth lectures on real world business issues.

This course offers a valuable opportunity for students to take ownership of their learning and produce an original and substantive piece of work. It allows them to tailor their studies to their individual interests and career aspirations. Students will produce a report or research paper on a topic of their choice on a specific business issue, industry or problem that they are particularly interested in. It gives them the opportunity to apply the skills and knowledge gained throughout the master’s programme in a self-directed study project under the supervision of a faculty advisor.

You can take up to two electives from the Master of Accounting, Master of Finance, Master of Finance in Financial Technology, Master of Global Management, Master of Science in Business Analytics or Master of Science in Marketing programme at HKU. Enrollment in electives from other programmes is subject to seat availability and approval by the Programme Directors concerned based on your profile, capabilities and performance in the MEcon programme.

Since enrollment in other taught postgraduate electives is not guaranteed, you should always choose three MEcon electives during the course enrollment in our programme. Course enrollment results of other programmes may only be confirmed after that course has started. If your enrollment is successful, you can drop the MEcon elective(s) and enroll in the other taught postgraduate elective(s).

It is your responsibility to make sure you obtain 60 credits to fulfill the graduation requirements and there is no overlapping of classes and exams in courses from different programmes.

*The list of available electives from other programmes may have prerequisite requirement(s) and is subject to change for future intakes.