Course Structure

The core of the curriculum is a two-year sequence of rigorous courses, with introductory courses taught in the first year and more specialized courses in the second year.

The first year courses cover the foundations of modern finance as well as basic research methods. All of these courses are mandatory and they are typically taught by local faculty.

    Introduction to Quantitative Methods
    Financial Markets and Instruments
    Mathematics and Optimization
    Probability and Statistics
    Microeconomics
    Asset Pricing I
    Continuous Time Finance I
    Corporate Finance I
    Financial Econometrics I
    Finance Paper Reading I
    Finance Research Seminar I
    Paper Writing

In the second year students can choose their area of specialization by selecting courses amongst a wide range of elective courses taught by international and local faculty. By attending these courses, students can acquaint themselves with the skills and knowledge required to work on specific research questions. Examples of usually offered elective courses are:

    Game Theory
    Microeconomics II
    Numerical Methods
    Term Structure Models
    Portfolio Theory and Asset Pricing
    Continuous Time Finance II
    Risk Management
    Credit Risk Modelling
Recent elective courses have been taught by amongst others Süleyman Basak from the London Business School ("Portfolio Management"), Nicolae Garleanu from the University of Pennsylvania ("Liquidity and Asset Pricing"), David Lando from the Copenhagen Business School ("Credit Risk Management"), Ruey Tsay from the University of Chicago ("Analysis of Financial Time Series"), and Toni Whited from the University of Wisconsin-Madison ("Empirical Corporate Finance and Applied Cross-Sectional Econometrics").

Irrespective of the area of specialization, students have to take the following mandatory courses in their second-year.

    Corporate Finance II
    Asset Pricing II
    Financial Econometrics II
    Finance Paper Reading II
    Finance Research Seminar II
    Advanced Paper Writing

Detailed university regulations regarding the PhD program can be found here for the University of Vienna and here for the Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien.

 
     













 

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