Courses

• QST PL 498: Directed Study in Markets, Public Policy, and Law
  Directed study in Markets and Public Policy. 2 or 4 cr. Application available on Undergraduate Program website
• QST PL 700: Introduction to Business Law
  This course will survey contemporary issues in selected areas of law and ethics. We will introduce pivotal areas of law, so that students begin to anticipate legal problems, analyze how to avoid them, and realize how legal principles can be employed to add value in their chosen fields. The subjects are torts, contracts, employment law, securities regulation and corporate governance. We expect that this overview of a few disciplines will encourage students to explore other legal topics relevant to their business interests. We will also offer an analytic structure that enables students to identify ethical issues in business, analyze options and make choices consistent with their own values.
• QST PL 714: Topics in Managerial Economics
  This course will review the economic principles of demand, cost, and competition and show how they provide a foundation for formulating corporate strategy. While much of the course will be devoted to decisions that maximize profits, we will also examine whether profit maximization is the proper (and only) objective underlying the decisions companies make. Other topics include the determinants of demand, demand elasticity, the relationship between production processes and costs, economies of scale, the distinction between planning-stage and realized costs, marginal analysis, interdependent decisions (game theory), and how market structure affects pricing.
• QST PL 727: Organizations, Markets, and Society
  Understanding and analyzing the core strategic decisions facing businesses in competitive markets. Students will examine how businesses achieve their fundamental goals given the need to produce goods and services efficiently and a market environment reflecting consumer preferences (demand) and the strategies and strengths of competitors. Students will develop analytic skills necessary for understanding core business models and how different models create value for the business as well as the larger society.
• QST PL 834: Macroeconomics in the Global Environment
  Macroeconomics is the study of the aggregate behavior of global market participants, i.e. consumers, firms, workers, governments, central banks, foreign investors. Decision making by investment bankers, product/sales managers, policy makers, or consumers inevitably rely on an understanding of the main forces driving GDP, inflation, unemployment, interest rates, and exchange rates. Consider these questions: 1. Should new consumer durable products be launched during recessions? 2. Are countries that experience high productivity growth good investment targets? 3. Will interest rates drop if the US government starts buying back its debt? 4. With significant liquidity demands by the US economy from the public sector, the household sector and businesses, what explains the low US interest rates? Are these factors expected to keep interest rates low also in the future? 5. Can the Euro boost productivity in Europe in the medium to long run and what are the competitiveness challenges for US businesses of such changes? 6. What are the economic effects of wars and how should they be financed? These and other issues will come up in the course. The main goal of this course is to provide a coherent framework that you can use to understand economic events as you confront them in your work environment.
• QST PL 837: Strategic Fundraising and Corporate Philanthropy
  This course is designed to help students develop a sophisticated understanding of the field of philanthropy and its role in building successful nonprofit organizations. The course is designed for students who want to become effective nonprofit managers and development professionals, securing financial resources for charitable organizations from foundations, corporations, and individuals. It is also designed to help students become thoughtful stewards of philanthropic funds as a foundation trustee or program officer, corporate giving officer, or individual philanthropist. Accordingly, the course will alternately adopt the perspective of the grant-seeker and the grant-maker. This approach will help prepare future leaders in the field, whether providers of funding or applicants for it, to understand the current and historical context of their work and to ask the right questions of prospective funders, prospective grantees, and their own organizations. The course will consider diverse viewpoints on philanthropy and explore some alternatives to traditional grant-making.
• QST PL 845: Improving Your Decisions
  The main aim of Improving Your Decisions is to present many of the decision problems managers face and to identify the most effective ways to make sound decisions -- as well as the pitfalls, biases, and mistakes that should be avoided. A key element of the course is to present students with a series of decision challenges: What would you do? In other words, you must come to grips with actual decisions and defend your actions. The assigned readings also convey the most recent research findings in behavioral economics: how individuals and managers actually make decisions. The second half of the course centers on group decision making: how groups with common and not-so-common interests decide. The focus shifts from individual choices to group decisions that embody both competitive and cooperative elements.
• QST PL 850: Social Entrepreneurship
  The Social Entrepreneurship course is designed to: (1) explore the concepts, practices, opportunities, and challenges of social entrepreneurship; (2) provide frameworks and tools that will help students be more effective in this sector; and (3) provide an opportunity for students to create a business plan for a new social enterprise or an income-generating initiative of a nonprofit organization. In the business plan project, student teams will partner with external organizations. Students will identify and analyze opportunities, resources, and risks and apply skills from marketing, accounting, organizational behavior, strategy and other disciplines. Special emphasis will be placed on aspects of business planning and organizational strategy that are particularly challenging or distinctive in the social sector, including mission definition, leadership, organizational structure, raising capital, and measuring results.
• QST PL 851: Sustainable Energy Business Models and Policies
  The course will feature a series of 13 speakers, each from one area of sustainable energy business, in a discussion that connects the business strategy, business model, public policy and regulatory drivers that affect the business. The areas featured include solar and wind energy, the smart grid, energy efficiency businesses, energy storage, and several others. The goal of the course is to (1) introduce business students to this specialized area and to the range of subjects they will need to learn if they intend to pursue a career in this sector; (2) show students how different sustainable energy companies define their business model to respond to transformations and opportunities in their industry, and how that business model interacts with public policies. Students from outside of Questrom may enroll with permission of instructor, based on knowledge of energy technologies, regulation, and basic energy economics.
• QST PL 852: El Ind Strt&Gov
  
• QST PL 861: Emerging Issues in Business and Law
  You ask your outside lawyer or your company's legal department whether you can undertake some activity without violating the law. You are annoyed when you are told "Well, maybe. It depends". You want a yes-or-no answer, not a game of twenty questions. Why can't your lawyers give you a straight answer? Why do they make everything more complicated? What language are they speaking? Most business people ask these questions. If you do business you cannot avoid dealing with lawyers. You can allow your interactions with lawyers to frustrate you, or you can learn how lawyers think so that you can better manage them. Emerging Issues in Business Law introduces graduate business students to fundamentals of legal analysis by focusing on timely legal problems of particular interest to business. Students develop familiarity with substantive legal principles and leave the course with the ability to recognize legal issues, discuss them intelligently, and understand why the lawyers seem incapable of giving a simple answer. The course uses lectures to provide a common foundation of knowledge. It is primarily discussion based, using a question and answer format to engage students in the process of legal analysis.
• QST PL 864: Managing Political, Economic, Social, and Technology and Country Risk
  This case-based course introduces students to conceptual tools and frameworks that allow them to think systematically about environmental changes that restructure companies, industries, and countries, preparing them to deal with those changes. The course explores political, economic, technological, and social change, as well as natural disasters and political risk. Students will map the flow of events and experiences that shape political or business leaders' attitudes and will be introduced to the analyses of countries, systems, trends, stakeholders, scenario developments, cross-impact, and payoff assessments. They will assess probable shifts in stakeholder power within the industry or country and suggest potentially successful leadership and change strategies.
• QST PL 882: Public Policy Analysis
  This course explores the economics of the public sector and the impact government policy and programs have on society and business. The course provides students with tools to systematically examine the financing and measure the impact of government policies and regulations. It explores the rationale for government intervention, appropriate levels of intervention and how to measure the effectiveness of policies and regulations. This course is helpful to those who desire a deeper understanding of the central role government plays in the economy and how government impacts the business and nonprofit sectors.
• QST QM 221: Probabilistic and Statistical Decision-Making for Management
  Exposes students to the fundamentals of probability, decision analysis, and statistics, and their application to business. Topics include probability, decision analysis, distributions, sampling, estimation, hypothesis testing, and chi-square. Please note: Students may not receive credit for both SMG QM 221 and CAS EC 305.
• QST QM 222: Modeling Business Decisions and Market Outcomes
  Examines the use of economic and statistical tools for making business decisions. Topics include optimization (including linear programming), multiple regression, demand modeling, cost modeling, industry analysis (including models of perfect competition, monopoly, and oligopoly), and game theory. The course emphasizes modeling with spreadsheets.
• QST QM 323: Analytics
  Component of SMG SM 323, The Cross Functional Core. Teaches quantitative methods and modeling techniques that will improve the student's ability to make informed decisions in an uncertain world. The two major modules of the course are models for optimal decision-making and decision- making under uncertainty. The first module focuses on methods and predictive models for decision-making; how optimization models are used to identify the best choice; and how choices change in response to changes in the model's parameters (sensitivity analysis). The second module covers the measurement and management of risk and Monte Carlo simulation. Throughout the semester, we will perform hands-on analysis that will improve Excel modeling skills; discuss the ethical use of data analytics; and learn to recognize pitfalls and biases in quantitative decision-making.
• QST QM 711: Topics in Business Analytics
  This condensed analytics course focuses on how to learn from data, specifically to 1) assess the validity of conclusions that have been drawn from statistical analyses; 2) recognize the extent to which variation characterizes products and processes, and understand the implications of variation on organizational decisions when interpreting data; and 3) portray, summarize and analyze data to support operational and strategic decisions associated with the core business models. Students will increase their understanding of the use of probabilities to reflect uncertainty; how to interpret data in light of uncertainty to assess risk; and how to build and interpret regression models, which can be used to inform core business and organizational decisions.
• QST QM 716: Business Analytics: Data Analysis and Risk
  The overall goal of this course is to improve student ability to learn from data, specifically to 1) assess the validity of conclusions that have been drawn from statistical analyses; 2) recognize the extent to which variation characterizes products and processes, and understand the implications of variation on organizational decisions when interpreting data; and 3) portray, summarize and analyze data to support operational and strategic decisions associated with the core business models. Students will increase their understanding of the use of probabilities to reflect uncertainty; how to interpret data in light of uncertainty to assess risk; and how to build and interpret regression models, which can be used to inform core business and organizational decisions.
• QST QM 717: Data Analysis for Managerial Decision-Making
  The overall goal of this course is to improve student ability to learn from data, specifically to 1) assess the validity of conclusions that have been drawn from statistical analyses; 2) recognize the extent to which variation characterizes products and processes, and understand the implications of variation on organizational decisions when interpreting data; and 3) portray, summarize and analyze data to support operational and strategic decisions associated with the core business models. Students will increase their understanding of the use of probabilities to reflect uncertainty; how to interpret data in light of uncertainty to assess risk; and how to build and interpret regression models, which can be used to inform core business and organizational decisions.
• QST QM 880: Business Analytics: Spreadsheet Optimization and Simulation
  The modeling process illustrated throughout the course will significantly improve students? abilities to structure complex problems and derive insights about the value of alternatives. You will develop the skills to formulate and analyze a wide range of models that can aid in managerial decision-making in the functional areas of business. These areas include finance (capital budgeting, cash planning, portfolio optimization, valuing options, hedging investments), marketing (pricing, sales force allocation, planning advertising budgets) and operations (production planning, workforce scheduling, facility location, project management). The course will be taught almost entirely by example, using problems from the main functional areas of business. This course is not for people who want a general introduction to or review of Excel. This course is for students who are already comfortable using Excel and would like to use it to create optimization and simulation models.

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