The unprecedented development of financial markets, financial institutions and financial instruments in addition to the integration of financial markets and institutions are undoubtedly one of the most important developments that have left their mark on the world's economy in the last two decades. Increasing uncertainty in interest rates, and exchange rates of national currencies generated greater risks and speeded financial innovation. As a result, we have witnessed diversification into newly emerged and complicated financial markets and instruments. Almost everywhere in the world rapid developments in information and transaction technologies coupled with the abolition of public regulations and restrictions over financial markets and institutions, accelerated this process. The liberalization of financial markets has removed obstacles, and their integration of financial markets at the global scale provided fluidity to the international capital flows. In addition, financial markets and related institutions and instruments have generated their own growth dynamics that seem to be independent from the realities of economic production and physical capital investment.

The integration and the autonomous maturing of financial markets profoundly influenced the working of international economies. By challenging the framework of traditional economic theory, developed under the assumption of a closed economy, the integration and the autonomous maturing of financial markets oblige us to rethink the theories of determination of monetary and fiscal policies, national income, employment and growth.

Consequently, all of these developments reveal the necessity to scrutinize financial activities, as they gradually become more complicated, and their effects on economic theory and policy from an academic perspective. This necessity can best be addressed with a program, which brings the theory of economics, the theory of finance and quantitative methods together in a balanced way. Graduates of the Financial Economics Program are prepared for important positions at banks as credit and loan officers, at financial institutions as brokers and research analysts, and also at multinational companies as executive managers at the international level.

In addition, students can spend a semester at Hofstra
University in New York and earn a certificate.