We suggest that you read the following materials in preparation for the interviews. This is what we expect our team to know. If you’re unfamiliar with these concepts and the material, your application is unlikely to be successful.

Interview on microeconomics:

• Basic Microeconomics, you’d want to brush up by reviewing an introductory microeconomic text book. The interview will typically cover the following areas:
  • Supply and Demand, price formation, market equilibrium
  • Utility maximization, profit maximization, equalization at the margin as a concept
  • Perfect competition model and monopoly models
• A good Public Finance/Public Economics textbook should cover: these, e.g. Rosen’s textbook:
  • Part 1: Getting Started
    Chapter 1: Introduction
    Chapter 2: Tools of Positive Analysis
    Chapter 3: Tools of Normative Analysis
  • Part 2: Public Expenditure: Public Goods and Externalities
    Chapter 4: Public Goods
    Chapter 5: Externalities
    Chapter 6: Political Economy
    Chapter 7: Education
    Chapter 8: Cost-Benefit Analysis

Interview on finance:

The interview will cover:

• Financial statement analysis
  • Reading and understanding financial statements (balance sheet, cash flow statements, income statements). You should know the differences, what information can be found on what statement, correct way to record transactions and interpret information from these statements, etc.
  • Calculating and comparing relevant financial ratios
• Corporate finance – we suggest reviewing:
  • How to value companies including DCFs and calculating present value, WACC and the CAPM model
  • Capital structure and managing risk, financing versus valuation and key differences between debt and equity
• The Corporate Finance textbook we recommend is written by Myers and Brealey. 

Myers, Brealey. Principles of Corporate Finance (11th Edition). New York: McGraw-Hill, 2014.

• Part 1: Value
  Chapter 1: Introduction to Corporate Finance
  Chapter 2: How to Calculate Present Values
  Chapter 3: Valuing Bonds
  Chapter 5: Net Present Value and Other Investment Criteria
  Chapter 6: Making Investment Decisions with the Net Present Value Rule
• Part 2: Risk
  Chapter 7: Introduction to Risk and Return
  Chapter 8: Capital Asset Pricing Model
  Chapter 9: Risk and the Cost of Capital
• Part 3: Best Practices in Capital Budgeting
  Chapter 10: Project Analysis
• Part 4: Financing Decisions and Market Efficiency
  Chapter 13: Efficient Markets and Behavioral Finance
• Part 5: Payout Policy and Capital Structure
  Chapter 17: Does Debt Policy Matter
  Chapter 19: Financing and Valuation