Participants learn about the social benefits of financial markets and become familiar with basic definitions regarding financial economics and financial instruments (stocks, bonds, options and futures). Moreover, participants acquire knowledge about the micro-founded valuation of these financial instruments and their advantages for specific applications (for example the usage of futures in the agricultural sector). In the later course, we discuss decisions under uncertainty and option pricing (with binomial trees and the Black-Scholes-Merton formula). The program is completed by a discussion of the efficient market hypothesis and the derivation of the CAPM.

Participants should have basic knowledge in statistics and microeconomics.