General Information
Passing the economics or statistics waiver exam is one means whereby a student can obtain credit for economics courses required by the SAIS M.A. degree. (Micro, macro, monetary and trade are required for the M.A. degree; statistics is technically not a required course for the M.A. degree but is a common prerequisite for some SAIS programs or some courses required by SAIS programs). Not every student is allowed to take the waiver exam. Only students who have successfully completed (B- grade or better) a comparable course from an accredited academic institution are allowed to attempt to pass the corresponding waiver exam. If you are qualified to take a waiver exam, you will be given ONLY ONE opportunity to pass it. If you pass, you will be given credit on transcript for having completed the course. Otherwise you must complete the required economics courses in the normal way -- by taking them at SAIS at any time that they are offered: Fall, Spring, Summer, or in Pre-Term (micro and macro only). Since a student can only attempt a waiver exam once, we strongly recommend that the student devote more than a token amount of time reviewing the content of the course that they had taken previously, and also review up-to-date textbooks in the field. Students whose understanding of the course material is good and still relatively fresh may need only a couple of days or so of review prior to taking the waiver exam. On the other hand, those who have not seen the material in some time, or who were never quite comfortable with the subject matter in the first place may need several days of concentrated review. Please read through the rest of this page for more detailed information about the subject areas and content covered in each waiver exam. Examination Process
To apply to take a waiver exam, please send an email to: econwaiver@jhu.edu, attach a copy of your transcript (unofficial versions are acceptable), and indicate the name of the course that you believe is the equivalent course to that which you are seeking to be waived out of. Also importantly, please provide us with the preferred email address you want for subsequent communication with you, otherwise we will use the email address that you used in sending your application/inquiry. Your application will then be reviewed and if you are qualified to take the waiver exam, you will be informed shortly by email. You should then expect a second e-mail generated from our test-hosting facility (currently HostedWare (TM)) which will arrive a day or two before the examination window opens. This email will contain a link to the waiver exam itself, along with other exam-specific information. You may take the exam anytime during the 2-3 day window which the exam is active by clicking on the link provided in that email. HOWEVER, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ACTIVATE THE LINK UNTIL YOU ARE READY TO TAKE THE EXAM, as clicking on the link will immediately initiate the timed exam. Also, do not attempt to share the link as it is unique to you and will register you as having taken the exam once it is activated. Each exam usually has a 2-hour time limit and once initiated it must be completed in one sitting. Exams typically consist of 25+ multiple choice questions, most of which will be of a conceptual, calculatory, or graphical-interpretative nature for which calculations or side analysis be required to arrive at a possible solution. At the end of each exam, the test-hosting software will immediately score your performance and indicate whether or not you have passed the exam. The Registrar's office will then receive notification of your test result once the testing window has closed and all examinees have completed their exams. Subject Matter and Content of the Individual Waiver Exams
Samples of previous waiver exams are not made available. So to help you prepare for each exam, below are the descriptions of the subject matter areas that will be included: Microeconomics and Macroeconomics
Both the micro and macro economics courses at SAIS are taught at an INTERMEDIATE level (which is the next level above the "Principles" level. To qualify to take these exams, the student must show that they have succesfully taken intermediate-level courses on their prior academic transcript (there are no exceptions to this). Naturally, the exams themselves will feature questions that are at the intermediate-level of micro or macro. The Microeconomics waiver exam will include material from the following areas:
Supply and Demand; Utility Functions; Budget Constraints; Derivation of Demand Curves; Substitution and Income
Effect; Consumer and Producer Surplus; Market Demand and Elasticity; Productions and Cost Functions; Perfect Competition; Monopoly and Oligopoly; Multimarket Equilibruim; Asymmetric Information and Externalities and
Basic Game Theory. Some text books to consider for review are: Intermediate Microeconomics, by Varian, latest edition, Norton
Microeconomics, by Pindyck & Rubinfeld, latest edition, Pearson
Microeconomics, by Katz & Rosen, latest edition, McGraw-Hill. The Macroeconomics waiver exam will include material from the following areas:
National income Accounting; Labor/Goods and Money Markets; Money Supply Process; IS-LM Model; Aggregate
Demand and Supply; Phillips Curve; Theories of Consumption; Government Debt; Fiscal and Monetary Policy and
Some basic Open Economy Considerations. Some text books to consider for review are: Macroeconomics, by Abel & Bernanke, latest edition, Pearson
Macroeconomics, by Blanchard, latest edition, Pearson
Macroeconomics, by Mankiw, latest edition, Worth;
Macroeconomics, by Hall & Taylor, latest edition, Norton. International Trade/Monetary Theory
To qualify for the waiver exams in International Trade, the student must have previously completed a course in International Trade Theory. To qualify for the waiver exam in International Monetary Theory, the student must have previously completed a course in International Monetary Economics, International Finance, or Open-Economy Macroeconomics. The content of the International Trade and Monetary waiver exams are very much like that of a cumulative final exam in these two areas. The International Trade waiver exam will include material from the following areas:
Considers the theory and practice of international trade and investment. The cause of trade, the sources of the gains from trade and the domestic and international distribution of those gains. The instruments and consequences of trade policy measures, especially tariffs and quantitative restrictions, preferential trade agreements and the practice of trade policy. The text book to consider is: International Economics, by Appleyard, Field and Cobb, latest edition, McGraw-Hill. The International Monetary waiver exam will include material from the following areas:
The basic theory underlying the international monetary system. Topics include international financial markets; the macroeconomics of open economies; balance-of-payments and trade balances; exchange rates and foreign exchange markets; expectations, interests rates, capital flows; central banking and monetary policy in open economies; interaction of economies at the macro level and exchange-rate regimes. The text book to consider is: International Economics: Theory and Policy, by Krugman, Paul and Maurice Obstfeld, latest edition, Addison-Wesley. Statistics
Statistics is technically not a required course for the economics concentration at SAIS. However, many students at SAIS need courses that have statistics as a prerequisite. This exam is offered, therefore, to those students who already have had prior course work in Basic Statistics or Introductory Probability Theory and would like to get credit for their statistics knowledge. However, as statistics is a course that is offered through the International Economics Program, the statistics waiver exam itself emphasizes material that is considered essential knowledge for the Econometrics courses at SAIS. (Econometrics is the logical next course at SAIS for those who do waive out of statistics.) In short, not all the material of a basic probability theory or introductory statistics course will be tested, but only the content areas mentioned below. Mostly, these are concepts that are covered in the SAIS course "Statistical Methods for Business and Economics." SPECIAL REQUIREMENT FOR TAKING THE STATISTICS WAIVER: To field several of the questions you will need to have a good calculator handy as well as access to a set of STANDARD STATISTICAL TABLES which show probability or critical values for common statistical distributions. At the very minimum these tables should include t-distribution, chi-square and F-distributions. (Usually these tables can be found in the back of any statistics textbook or by performing an on-line search under "statistical tables".) It is suggested that you familiarize yourself with the use of these tables in advance so that you do not use an inordinate amount of time during the exam interpreting the numbers. The Statistics waiver exam will include material from the following areas:
Basic Probability Theory; Mathematical Expectation and Moments; Calculation of Sample Statistics and Measures of Central Tendency; Distribution Theory; and Hypothesis Testing. Note that for our purposes the waiver exam omits material on analysis-of-variance, linear regression, decision theory and Bayesian approaches, moment-generating functions, and point estimation theory (i.e. unbiasedness, consistency, efficiency, etc.). All or some of these topics may have been included as part of your basic mathematical statistics or probability theory course, but these will not be covered in the waiver exam. Some standard textbooks and references that can be used for review are: Statistics: Methods and Applications by Hill and Lewicki
Probability and Statistical Inference by Hogg and Tanis
Introduction to Mathematical Statistics and Its Applications by Larsen and Marx
Introduction to Probability and Statistics for Engineers and Scientists by Ross and Sheldon
Probability and Statistics by DeGroot and Schervish On-line sources to consider are:
http://www.statsoft.com/textbook/esc1.html http://dspace.mit.edu/html/1721.1/35270/14-30Fall-2004/OcwWeb/
Economics/14-30Fall-2004/CourseHome/index.html http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Mathematics/18-05Spring-2005/CourseHome/index.html
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