DAS in Finance

In the Financial Accounting course, we discuss the different types of financial information that stock market companies prepare. Financial Accounting creates transparency in financial markets and helps capital providers make good decisions when allocating funds. After the course, you will understand the different financial statements (balance sheets, income statements and cash flow statements) that a company publishes externally. You will also understand how estimates impact the financial information that companies publish externally.

This course provides the conceptual framework necessary to help managers decide what investment decisions make best sense. We start with investment projects, such as replacing machines, launching new products, or building new factories, and end with the exciting topic of computing the value of companies and negotiating agreements about the acquisition and sale of companies. The perspectives presented here cover both theoretical and practical issues. While the course’s focus is on investments, the principles we develop apply to management decisions in general with a view to helping you make better choices.

The Managerial Accounting course uses case studies to show how managers can apply internal information within companies to make better decisions and create value. One of the key contributions of the finance function in companies is strategic decision-making and strategic performance measurement. After the course, you will understand how reports prepared by financial managers can help other managers make better decisions and how financial managers can measure the strategic process of a company.

This course applies the fundamental tools and concepts of microeconomics – economic behavior, marginal analysis, opportunity cost, supply and demand analysis, and alternative market structures – to managerial decision-making. The course also uses economic analysis and tools to provide insights into internal organizational policies, including decision-right assignment, performance evaluation, and compensation plans. The course aims to help you develop your economic intuition about a broad range of problems related to business and everyday life, so that a business approach becomes second nature.

This course aims to provide the main tools for understanding the macroeconomic environment in which a company operates. It covers the key concepts for addressing a wide range of macroeconomic questions. We emphasize intuition and application of the concepts. Furthermore, we try to give an overview that covers the most important macroeconomic areas and topics such as growth, business cycles, monetary policy, exchange rates, and financial crises.

In the era of data science, managers need to have a good understanding of the foundations of uncertainty modelling and business analytics. In this course, you will first learn about the underlying concepts of uncertainty management. Subsequently, you will study both the opportunities and the limitations of data analysis in business. Finally, you will tackle some challenging business problems using regression analysis, perhaps the most important tool of modern data science.

In this course, you learn how firms interact with capital markets and why that is relevant. At the core of our considerations are three financial policies:

• Financing policy: How should firms finance their business activities?
• Investment policy: Which factors should guide a firm’s investment activities?
• Payout policy: How much and how should firms return capital to their investors?

You learn how financing instruments can be used to bridge disagreements, make deals more valuable, set the right incentives, and even serve as a truth serum. You discover the power of these tools in financing decisions throughout the lifecycle of a firm, including seed financing, venture capital, mergers and acquisitions, and initial public offerings. Finally, we extend this logic to financial risk management and learn how different financial instruments can be used to mitigate risk.