First, it familiarizes students with important issues in international finance. It covers a wide range of very different topics with “research potential”, for example the stability of a currency union; speculative attacks and arbitrage; exogenous shocks and their real effects; issues related to finance, politics, and development; financial crisis and contagion; financial stability and regulation; exchange rate dynamics and international asset holdings.

A second important course objective is to educate doctoral students on what characterizes successful research in terms of the question asked, the available data structure, the execution strategy, and overall relevance of the findings. Each student is expected to give multiple presentation from a list of recent research paper and evaluate why a particular paper deserved publication and was impactful.

The course material draws on a number of academic papers listed in the syllabus and available on the web. In each class, students present a set of papers together with a summary, critique and potential research ideas for further work on the topic of the papers. The presentation is 30 minutes. Each student will be responsible for two or three papers. The instructors will assign the papers. The course is intended for the PhD students in Finance (of the Swiss Finance Institute), for PhD students in Economics and in exceptional cases for master students.