Core course waiver examinations are held annually at the beginning of each academic year. Waivers are highly recommended for students with working knowledge of certain core areas in order to avoid frustration in courses that cover known material. For more information contact Student Services at evansdss@u.washington.edu or 206.543.4900.
PBAF 516: Microeconomic Policy Analysis
Course Description: This course examines ways in which microeconomic analysis can contribute to the analysis of public sector issues. It covers supply and demand, consumer and firm behavior, competitive and monopoly markets, and the role of government in the market.
Waiver Examination Description: The waiver exam for PBAF 516 consists of a set of problems that require the students to apply microeconomic concepts to a variety of public policy issues. The concepts are drawn from the list below. The exam will be a 2-hour, in-class, open book examination.
Recommended Texts: Virtually any intermediate level textbook on microeconomic theory can be used to review for the exam. We do not require students to use calculus in our economics courses, so choose a text that covers the ideas without calculus. We suggest that students review a text with extensive applications of microeconomic theory to policy issues. Among the better texts in this regard are:
- E. Browning and J. Browning or M. Zupan, Microeconomic Theory and Applications, Scott, Foresman
- W. Nicholson, Intermediate Microeconomics and its Application, Dryden Press
- E. Mansfield, Microeconomics, Norton.
- D. Hyman, Modern Microeconomics: Analysis and Application, Irwin
- R. Frank, Microeconomics and Behavior, McGraw Hill
Material Covered:
- The law of demand and the difference between changes in demand and changes in quantity demanded
- How to calculate and diagram equilibrium price and quantity
- How to calculate and diagram shortages and surpluses under price and quantity controls, and revenues and expenditures under taxes and subsidies
- Price elasticity of demand
- How to construct and apply the indifference curve/budget constraint diagram of consumer theory
- How competitive markets adjust to a long run equilibrium
- The difference in revenues and consumer and producer surplus under a monopoly and a competitive market
- Present value
- Externalities and public goods
Quantitative Analysis I & II
In this two-course sequence, we explore how to formulate research questions, gain familiarity with the research process, and learn how to apply appropriate analytic techniques to policy and management problems.
PBAF 527: Quantitative Analysis I
Course Description: This course is an introduction to research and statistical analysis. Students gain an understanding of research and statistical analyses as ways to explore, describe, or explain phenomena of management or policy concern. They learn to formulate answerable research questions. Students use descriptive statistics, elementary probability approaches, and statistical inference to address policy or management problems.
Waiver Examination Description: Students interested in waiving PBAF 527 will take a 2-hour open-book and open-note exam. Be prepared to demonstrate your knowledge of descriptive statistics, pictorial presentations of data, elementary probability approaches, the normal distribution, confidence intervals, comparison of means and proportions, and the steps and execution of hypothesis testing. Review McClave and Sincich's textbook Statistics 10th Edition, Chapters 1-9 (2006 Prentice Hall).
PBAF 528: Quantitative Analysis II
Course Description: This course concentrates on enhancing students’ ability to distill complex research problems into practical analyses. Therefore, the course introduces the basics of research design and emphasizes the conditions necessary for establishing a relationship between a causal factor and some outcome of interest. Students gain knowledge of how to apply probability, hypothesis testing, and confidence intervals to multivariate policy and management problems. Students learn to read and analyze empirical studies and, by the end of the course, are able to produce a useful empirical analysis for a non-statistician.
Waiver Examination Description: Students interested in waiving PBAF 528 should submit a written piece of research that demonstrates the ability to apply simple multivariate techniques (for example: ANOVA, regression, or GIS) as well as research design and data collection skills. This research can be, for example, a paper from a previous course, a report completed through the course of a job, or a thesis.
PBAF 522: Financial Management and Budgeting
Course Description: The course is a user-oriented course on financial management and budgeting in the public and nonprofit sectors. The study of budgeting encompasses concepts and issues related to budgetary processes, budget construction and analysis, their political and institutional contexts, resource allocation, cost analysis, revenue projections, and financial management (including user-level familiarity with financial statements). While the politics of budgeting is that which largely separates pubic budgeting from budgeting in other sectors, the tools of budgeting and the analytic skills are general enough for application in all levels of government, and in the nonprofit and private sectors. Therefore, our emphasis will be to provide the student with these more general and analytic skills.
At the end of the course, the student should be able to:
- Use financial statements to analyze the financial condition of an organization in a very basic way
- Demonstrate knowledge of the processes by which budgets are prepared, adopted, and executed
- Perform simple cost allocations, cost analyses, revenue projections, and tax incidence analyses
- Build a budget as part of a case study analysis
- Appreciate the political and institutional contexts that bear on resource allocation decisions in an environment of scare resources
- Build simple operating and capital budgets for an organization
- Use cost data in a managerial decision-making environment, including decisions related to programming
Waiver Examination Description: The waiver exam for this course is an open-book, open-note exam lasting 2 hours. The exam will include some questions requiring “qualitative” answers that articulate your understanding of the topic and some questions that require “quantitative” answers to test your knowledge of key budgeting, costing, and financial management techniques. We encourage students who have taken a previous graduate course in budgeting, managerial and financial accounting, or who have work experience as a budget analyst to take this exam. We advise those without such preparation, including those with undergraduate accounting course work or work experience as accountants, to take the course. The course differs from many graduate-level courses in its user-oriented, managerial focus on the issues described above.