Finance, PhD

Curriculum

Finance students take courses from both the Katz Graduate School of Business and the Department of Economics as part of their training. The finance faculty offers seminars that provide the core of the doctoral students’ training. These seminars introduce the theoretical underpinnings of finance. Beyond these seminars, students are expected to take additional finance seminars that focus on their chosen areas of interest. Since strong methodological skills are critical to a successful scholarly career, finance doctoral students typically also take courses in econometrics, statistics, and mathematical methods. Students are free to matriculate into courses within the Katz school, other colleges at the University of Pittsburgh (such as Statistics or Mathematics), or at Carnegie Mellon University.

A minimum of eight major and seven methodology related courses are necessary to fulfill coursework requirements. Students typically pursue four courses per semester for two years prior to taking their comprehensive exams in late summer following their second year. The finance seminars that are consistently offered by Katz faculty are shown below:

• Finance Fundamentals
• Corporate Finance Theory and Methods
• Corporate Finance Seminar 1
• Corporate Finance Seminar 2
• Corporate Finance Seminar 3
• Empirical Methods in Finance
• Empirical Asset Pricing
• Market Microstructure
• Property Rights and Theory of the Firm

The courses that students often take outside of Katz are shown below:

• Advanced Microeconomic Theory 1, 2
• Introduction to Econometric Theory
• General Econometrics
• Advanced Econometrics 1, 2
• Mathematics of Finance 1, 2, and 3