Bachelor
2023/2024
Introduction in Finance
Type:
Elective course (HSE/NES Programme in Economics)
Area of studies:
Economics
Delivered by:
Undergraduate Programmes Curriculum Support
Where:
Faculty of Economic Sciences
When:
2 year, 3, 4 module
Mode of studies:
offline
Open to:
students of one campus
Instructors:
Carsten Sprenger
Language:
English
ECTS credits:
6
Contact hours:
64
Course Syllabus
Abstract
This course is a first course in finance and will give you an overview over the most common
financial instruments, contemporary financial markets and financial intermediaries. In what
follows, it covers the basic topics in Corporate Finance and Investments. Core concepts will include
the time value of money, opportunity costs, arbitrage pricing, bond valuation, stock valuation,
concepts of risk, portfolio theory, investment strategies, asset pricing, market efficiency, and
capital structure.
Financial markets and corporations generate a large quantity of data. An important part of the
course will be to visualize and analyze price data for different financial instruments (stocks, bonds,
indices, derivatives). The programming language of choice for this course is R, and you are highly
encouraged to learn its basics. This gives you a single tool to perform such diverse tasks as data
visualization, finding polynomial roots (e.g., an internal rate of return), bond valuation, portfolio
optimization, estimating factor models, and derivative pricing