Enterprise Internationalization: Theory and Practice

Credits: 2
Credit Hours: 36

This course consists of three sections that integrate basic theories, methodologies, and case studies of enterprise internationalization. In the first section, we analyze the background, facts, and general trend concerning the internationalization of enterprises. The second section is mainly on theories and methodologies, ranging from the theories on boundaries and governance of international firms (including Coase theory, contract theory, transaction cost theory, and principal-agent theory) to the theories on firms’ trade, international investment, and participation in global value chains (GVCs). The final section discusses the practices and experiences of firms in the process of internationalization, and the implications of internationalization for the firm itself and for the whole economy.

International Business Studies

Credits: 3
Credit Hours: 54

The course is designed to study the hot issues of international business and strategic management fields focusing on multinational corporations in emerging markets, which has become a new and attractive academic stream in recent decades. As Chinese market has been one of the main playing grounds of multinationals for decades and Chinese firms have jumped rapidly into the global market in recent decades, comparative perspective and method are utilized in the course in order to promote students’ deep understanding on the experiences and trends of foreign firms in China, and determinants and performance of Chinese firms’ globalization as well. The content covers four sections as follows: Theories of transnational management; Advanced market-based multinationals in emerging markets; Comparisons of emerging market-based multinationals; Globalization of Chinese firms.

Analytical and Managerial Economics

Credits: 3
Credit Hours:54

This course aims to introduce widely used data analysis techniques in Economics. We focus on causal inference methods, including random assignment, matching and subclassification, linear regression, panel data models, instrumental variables regression, regression discontinuity design, differences-in-differences estimation, and synthetic control. Relevant STATA commands will be illustrated in class. By the end of this course, students are expected to know how to properly assess empirical research and how to properly conduct empirical research using STATA in related fields.

International Trade Theory and Practice

Credits: 2
Credit Hours: 36

The purpose of this course is to help students understand the basics of international trade and the effects of various international economic policies on domestic and world welfare, with an empirical focus on China trade and foreign direct investment. The course will highlight sources of comparative advantage, gains and losses from trade, the impact of trade on economic growth, and effects of trade policy interventions such as tariffs, quotas, voluntary export restraints, and export subsidies. In doing so, it will emphasize both theoretical (analytical) models as well as empirical studies of how well those models fit “real world” data. I will try to strike a balance between the "extensive" and the "intensive" margins of the course materials: the extensive margin refers to an overview of various topics in the field of international trade, while the intensive margin means technical training and empirical real-life cases in China on selected topics.

International Finance
Credits: 3
Credit Hours: 54

This course focuses on the theory and practice of international finance, introducing the concepts and theories of exchange rates and balance of payments, followed by macroeconomic policies in an open economy.

We are going to cover the most important issues of the international economy in the last 20 years. Why could China export so much and accumulate huge foreign reserves? Why was the global economy seriously unbalanced before the 2008 crisis, with China and Germany on one side, and America and the southern European countries on the other side? Was the Euro turmoil just the aftershock of the American crisis, or a doomed disaster of the defective Euro system? And as to the future, what is the reform direction of the international monetary system? What is a better framework of global financial governance, and what is the trend of our global economy?

International Business Law and Environments
Credits: 2
Credit Hours: 36

The purpose of this course is to introduce the principal knowledge of international business law systems and global business environments.  Balancing authoritative theories and meaningful analysis, the course engages students on the subject of conducting business in international markets and helps students effectively understand the main features of the current world economy.

International Business Negotiation

Credits: 2
Credit Hours: 36

This course integrates the study of business negotiation with international economics, providing a comprehensive framework for navigating global commercial interactions. Students will explore core concepts in the psychology of bargaining—including decision-making theories, conflict resolution tactics, and interpersonal dynamics—while simultaneously grounding these strategies in economic principles such as trade policies, market forces, and cross-border financial systems.

Chinese Economy

Credit: 3
Credit Hours: 54

This course aims to address the factors driving China's rise, how to capitalize on its growing market, the impact of its rise on the world, and the challenges that jeopardize its sustainable development. It offers insights from various perspectives such as economy, business, culture, and politics. The course begins by examining the historical legacy and its influence on current economic development and society. It then focuses on studying the key economic players (governments, diverse firms, and the financial market) and their interactions. Additionally, it explores human capital development, labor and marriage market, seen as vital for future growth. The fourth part identifies challenges that hinder economic performance, with emphasis on the income inequality. Finally, the course analyzes China's interactions with the rest of the world and her future development.

Legal Aspects of Start-ups Doing Business in China
Credits: 2
Credit Hours: 36

How to make money in China? How to avoid to losing money within China? While the first issue suits business schools, the latter is a typical law school issue. However, this course, Legal Aspects of Start-ups Doing Business in China, stands up in between, in the belief that without the helmet and shield from the legal premise, a business pioneer would risk all the efforts of his innovations, products and business models in the long-term race, not to mention safeguarding his harvest from such business. A proper parachute is instantly and constantly necessary before the entrepreneurship soars high into blue sky.

This course applies PEST and SWOT analyses, as well as case-study methods, in the POV of a start-up, to walk the students through the whole business-life, including but not limited to soft-landing phase, the formation of business, the transaction rules, the legal compliance of routine operations, and the dispute resolutions.

Students shall get their scores based upon the attendance and performance of class and assignments, presentation(s), and the performance of final examination. The percentage of A scores shall not exceed to 30% of total participants of the enrolled class.

Venture Capital, IPO and Merger and Acquisition

Credits: 3
Credit Hours: 54

This course aims to explore in depth the key financial strategies in venture capital, corporate listing and mergers and acquisitions. By analyzing a series of real cases, the course will reveal the logic, strategy and execution points behind these complex transactions. Students will learn how to evaluate investment opportunities, optimize capital structure, and develop effective M&A strategies in a changing market environment.

Tax Consideration in International Business

Credits: 2
Credit Hours: 36

This course is designed specifically for non-tax-major foreign graduate students for the purposes of equipping them with necessary tax knowledge and skills in dealing with tax opportunities, challenges, and risks in international business operation. The course will go through major tax issues and relevant tax rules involved in the operation course of international business and finance, such as tax in cross-border sales and services, supply-chain management, cross-border investment, mergers & acquisition, internal re-organization, and intra-group resources sharing (e.g., financing, IP, HR, and tangible assets sharing, etc.). In the class, both MNCs’ maneuvers in tax optimization and tax authorities’ anti-avoidance measures will be discussed in an interactive manner. The ultimate goal of the course is to build up a comprehensive understanding and balanced view on the tax matters of international business.

Foreign Direct Investment in Transition

Credits: 2
Credit Hours: 36

This course will explore the motivation and effects of FDI in host countries. The contents consist of two parts, namely general topics and special issues. As for the part of general topics, we will investigate FDI’s role in economic growth and technological progress. As for the part of special issues, we will focus on inward and outward FDI in China. In this part, the first 5 sessions will discuss facts and effects of inward FDI in China. The last session will turn to outward FDI in China.

China’s Taxation System and Fiscal Policy

Credits: 3
Credit Hours: 54

This course is designed to introduce China’s taxation system and fiscal policy. It will start with a brief description of the level of China’s tax revenue, China’s tax legislation system, tax collection and administration system and the taxes payable in China. Then the course will cover the rules of China’s major taxes. Various elements such as the scope, taxpayers, taxable items, rates and incentives of these taxes will be discussed. After that, we will recall the major measures taken in China’s last two rounds of tax reform and try to forecast the possible steps of future tax reform. In addition, we will discuss China’s budget system, intergovernmental fiscal relationship and the major fiscal policy measures and their effects.

China’s Financial System

Credits: 3
Credit Hours: 54

This course examines the role of China's financial system in supporting the growth of its economy and explores the directions of its development.

Social Security System and Its Reform in China

Credits: 2
Credit Hours: 36

Through this course, Master students will gain an understanding of the basic concepts of the social security system, relevant theories and the bud, the formation, the question of reform, and the trends of the social security system in the world. On this basis, the establishment, development, reform, and reconstruction of the Chinese urban and rural social security system are introduced since the founding of New China.

Investments

Credits: 3
Credit Hours: 54

This course provides a rigorous introduction to the principles and practices of modern investments, designed for international master's students. The curriculum is centered on the core tenets of investment theory, including modern portfolio theory, risk-return trade-offs, asset pricing models (CAPM and APT), market efficiency, and behavioral finance. Beyond theory, the course covers the fundamentals of portfolio performance evaluation, and active management strategies. A distinctive feature is the consistent integration of empirical evidence and institutional details from the Chinese capital market, offering a unique and practical perspective. The course aims to equip students with the analytical frameworks and quantitative tools necessary to make informed investment decisions in a global context, with a special focus on understanding the dynamics of China's evolving financial landscape.

Core Competencies of Career - Theory and Business Practice of Creativity and Leadership

Credits: 2
Credit Hours: 36

Under the backdrop of technological innovation, creativity and leadership are emerging as distinctive advantages for personal career development in the workplace. Continuous breakthroughs in professional domains and exerting greater leadership influence in teamwork to secure enhanced resource support both rely on the cultivation and enhancement of creativity and leadership. This course, based on the latest research findings from both domestic and international sources, and integrating specific business practice cases, will provide cutting-edge knowledge and tools. Through collaborative academic and practical learning environments, students will be provided with theoretical frameworks and practical guidance, actively engaging with the real business world and laying a solid foundation for developing the creativity and leadership competencies essential for future career success.

Financial Institutions and Markets

Credits: 3
Credit Hours: 54

This course is designed to introduce various types of financial markets and institutions with a particular focus on Chinese financial systems. This course will discuss the functions of both depository and non-depository institutions including banks, investment funds, and others. This course will also explore the organization and structure of different markets. In each part, we will start with general theory and evidence from developed economies. We will then discuss the unique characteristics of Chinese counterparties. Students are expected to finish a final paper about the Chinese financial markets and institutions in which they are interested at the end of the course.

Corporate Finance Theory and Practice

Credits: 3
Credit Hours: 54

This course stresses the modern fundamentals of corporate financial decision-making with special reference to valuation, investment, and corporate restructuring. While building upon key economic theory and accounting framework, the course develops distinctive conceptual frameworks and specialized tools for solving real-world financial problems at both the individual and corporate level. The course is a blend of theory and practice. While diligent practice will make you competent in financial techniques, a good grasp of theory will help you think systematically about ways to solve a problem for which no existing technique is suitable or available. Specific topics to be covered include bond valuation, security valuation, capital investment decisions, portfolio theory and capital asset pricing model, corporate capital structure, cost of capital, dividend policy and mergers and acquisitions.

Financial Statistics

Credits: 3
Credit Hours: 54

The Financial Statistics course introduces EMA students to modern financial statistical methods and applications. The course is based on modern financial statistical theories and methods, and focuses on the application of these theoretical methods to quantitative finance. It is an important course to cultivate students' basic quality and ability to analyze and study financial data using financial statistical theory and methods, and it is also a core professional course in the direction of quantitative finance, which has the characteristics of basic, scientific and practical.

Financial Theory and Policy

Credits: 3
Credit Hours: 54

From the most basic theories of finance, this course teaches and discusses the theories and policies closely related to the operation of China’s financial market and China’s financial reform.

This course provides a seminar-style teaching of major key theoretical and policy issues such as financial risk and financial crisis and the theory and practice of financial regulation. This course helps students to gain an initial understanding of the basic theories of finance, monetary policy, theories of financial functions and structures, theories of financial markets with corporate finance and asset pricing as the core, theories and policies of open finance, and the development of theories and policies of financial regulation.

Economic Analysis: Stata and Model Application

Credits: 3
Credit Hours: 54

This is a graduate elective course with a focus on applied microeconomics analysis with the statistical software Stata. This course teaches students the use of Stata in a detailed way, covering the data cleaning, mining, merging and appending data, conducting panel data analysis with various types of features, how to run various types of regressions depending on the research question and data limitation and perform post estimation analysis. In the later part of the class, we will go over MLE and its application, discuss the application of probit, logit, tobit regression, and hackit model.

Topics on Development Economics

Credits: 3
Credit Hours: 54

This course examines why some countries are rich while others are poor with a focus on total factor productivity (TFP). We start from Hall and Jones (1999) by introducing students the significant differences in aggregate TFP that exist across countries and highlight the importance of TFP variation in explaining income variation. We then study the common empirical methods to compute TFP and discuss capital misallocation within countries as a specific source that reduces aggregate TFP and causes a lower income. Next, we discuss the status quo of innovation, which is a key driver of TFP growth, in various countries. Lastly, we discuss the implication of economic development on economic inequality.

Dissertation Writing in Economics

Credits: 3
Credit Hours: 54

This is a course on Dissertation Writing in Economics. This course is designed to help graduate students to make a transition from coursework to paper writing. It is targeted at first-year master's students. Other students can also benefit from this course but have to fit the material into their own stages in the program. The course will address topics and questions such as:

• What is a good topic? How to choose a good topic?

• How to read the literature? Where can you find it?

• How to write a paper in the Economic field?

• How to present the papers?

• How to publish and revise a paper?

We will approach each subject from both theoretical and applied perspectives. In general, instructors will provide the general guidance for each subject. Students and the instructor will work together on specific examples and cases to practice general guidance. Given that the course will heavily rely on on-site discussions participation is strongly encouraged. Note that previous writing or presentation experience is not required: if you have taken writing or presentation in general, you will benefit more from specific subjects in Economics.

Money and Banking

Credits: 3
Credit Hours: 54

The course aims to give students an overview of the financial markets and an understanding of the theory and practice of monetary policy. The topics will be a blend of theoretical modelling and empirical / historical discourses.

Analysis of Financial Statements and Valuation

Credits: 3
Credit Hours: 54