Degree Requirements

Law School and School of Management Joint J.D.-Ph.D. in Finance Program

(1) Course Requirements:

SOM: Eight courses, including the following five required courses:  Economics 500 (General Economic Theory: Microeconomics); Economics 501b (General Economic Theory: Microeconomics, which is the course covering an introduction to game theory ); Economics 550a and 551b (Econometrics I and II); MGT 740 (Financial Economics I); and two additional PhD level finance courses. Upon reaching Ph.D. candidacy, students are required to attend MGT 782 (Ph.D. PreSeminar: Financial Economics).

Law School: 71 credit units, which include the required first term courses taken in one semester (Contracts, Torts, Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law); Criminal Law; a course satisfying the legal ethics requirement; 6 credit units satisfying the experiential learning requirement; and Business Organizations.

(2) Pre-dissertation Writing Requirements:

Two papers are required: (1) a paper fulfilling the SOM second year research paper requirement and (2) a paper fulfilling one of the Law School writing requirements (substantial or supervised analytic writing).  Students present the second year paper in ECON 679 (Financial Economics Student Lunch). Note: an accepted SOM second year research paper will fulfill the student’s remaining law school paper requirement by registration for independent research credit with the student’s law school faculty advisor.

(3) Qualifying exam in finance: 

The section of the qualifying exam pertaining to MGT 740 and two additional doctoral finance courses taken.  The qualifying exam is currently taken after the student has completed all of the required graduate finance courses.

(4) Dissertation and oral defense.