Theresa Kuchler
Associate Professor of Finance
CEPR Research Affiliate
New York University
Leonard N. Stern School of Business
44 West 4th Street, KCM 9-86
New York, NY 10012
Courses
Personal Finance (Undergraduate Class at NYU Stern - Fall 2024)
Course Summary
How should you manage your student loans? Is a credit card useful to have? Should you buy a house or rent? What are the different mortgage options available to finance a home and which one should you choose? How much should you contribute to your retirement savings account? Which health insurance makes the most financial sense? How do you know if graduate school is a good investment? Every day, individuals face many financial decisions. How they make these decisions and how they choose has potentially far reaching consequences for themselves. But it also has implications for society more generally, from how policy makers design the tax code and social services, to how firms interact with customers to how persistent income and wealth inequalities are over generations.
In this class, we well draw on research insights from financial economics, public economics and behavioral economics to cover a broad range of common financial decisions individuals face throughout their lives. We will discuss how individuals can make the best decisions for themselves, as well as common pitfalls and mistakes. We will also discuss the implications for policy makers, firms interacting with consumers and society more broadly.
Research Topics in Empirical Household Finance (PhD Class at NYU Stern - Fall 2024)
Course Summary
The PhD class has three goals. 1) Familiarize students with research topics in the growing area of household finance.
2) Familiarize students with the empirical methods used in household finance research.
3) Help students develop their own research ideas and projects.
In the first class, I will give an introductory lecture to provide an overview of the field, including both topics and methods.
Over the course of the semester, we will then learn about different research areas in household finance. Papers chosen for reading and presentation in each area will be largely empirical and encompass seminal and current research papers. We will learn about empirical methods as we study papers applying these methods.
In addition to the topic focused classes, we will regularly set aside class meetings for student presentations to help students develop and work on their own research in a collaborative setting. Each student is required to present in each of the workshop sessions.
Research Topics in Empirical Household Finance (PhD Class at NYU Stern - Fall 2023)
Course Summary
The PhD class has three goals. 1) Familiarize students with research topics in the growing area of household finance.
2) Familiarize students with the empirical methods used in household finance research.
3) Help students develop their own research ideas and projects.
In the first class, I will give an introductory lecture to provide an overview of the field, including both topics and methods.
Over the course of the semester, we will then learn about different research areas in household finance. Papers chosen for reading and presentation in each area will be largely empirical and encompass seminal and current research papers. We will learn about empirical methods as we study papers applying these methods.
In addition to the topic focused classes, we will regularly set aside class meetings for student presentations to help students develop and work on their own research in a collaborative setting. Each student is required to present in each of the workshop sessions.
Research Topics in Empirical Household Finance (PhD Class at NYU Stern - Fall 2020)
Course Summary
This PhD course presents research topics in the growing area of household finance. Each week, we will read a number of papers in one research area within household finance. Most of the papers will be empirical, and in most weeks our discussions will highlight how the papers use various empirical strategies (instrumental variables, differences-in-differences, regression discontinuity, structural estimation, and field experiments) to identify causal effects. The topics are chosen to give students a taste of the types of research done under the 'household finance' umbrella, rather than to provide a comprehensive overview of household finance research. The papers on the reading list include both seminal and current research papers in the area.
Recordings of Empirical Household Finance Online PhD Class (Fall 2020)
Course Summary
In the fall of 2020, Professor Theresa Kuchler and Professor Johannes Stroebel of NYU Stern put together five half-day intensive units on important topics in Empirical Household Finance for PhD students and other interested audience members. These unites were designed to introduce participants to some of the leading research and researchers in the field.
Foundations of Finance (Undergraduate class at NYU Stern)
Course Summary
The course is a rigorous, quantitative introduction to financial market structure and financial asset valuation. The main topics of the course are arbitrage, portfolio selection, equilibrium asset pricing (CAPM), fixed income securities and derivative pricing. There is a small section on project valuation. You are expected to understand valuation formulas and be able to apply them to new problems. The appropriate tools necessary for solving these problems will be developed at each stage and practiced in the homework assignments. The models we will cover have immediate applications and implications for real-world financial decisions. Every effort will be made to relate the course material to current financial news.
