Course Detail

Portfolio Choice and Asset Pricing (35901)

Course Description by Faculty

  • Nagel, Stefan
  • Content

    This PhD-level course covers recent research on investor portfolio choice, asset pricing, and behavioral finance. The objective of the course is for students to apply the knowledge of financial economics they obtained in the PhD course sequence to evaluate research, dissect research methods and modeling approaches, identify open questions, and map out avenues for future research. The final project for this course is a research proposal that can potentially serve as a foundation for a summer paper project. Much of the time in this course is spent on material from the current research frontier, with a particular focus on topics that seem promising for further research efforts. Topics include retail investor trading; formation of investor expectations and investor demand; demand-systems asset pricing; pricing of extreme event risk; monetary policy and asset prices; pricing of inflation risk; international asset pricing.  


  • Prerequisites
    The prerequisites for the course are a strong background in economics and finance (comparable to Business 34901), taken here or elsewhere. PhD students can register without my approval. To get approval to register, non-PhD students must first send me an e-mail describing their background.  
  • Grades
    Grades
    • Allow Provisional Grades (For joint degree and non-Booth students only)

    • Early Final Grades (For joint degree and non-Booth students only)

    Restrictions
    • No auditors

    • No pass/fail grades

  • Syllabus
  • Spring 2023Section: 35901-50M 8:30AM-11:30AMHarper Center3SW - Seminar RoomIn-Person Only
Description and/or course criteria last updated: January 10 2023