English

The course introduces the fundamental system and main principles, particularly the legal systems and the practice related to inbound investment and outbound investment of China after the Reform and Opening Up in 1978, as well as the interactions among foreign investment laws, other domestic laws, and international investment agreements. Topics: history and source of underlying international investment law, the primary substantive principles and standards which serve to protect investors and investments under international investment agreements, such as most-favored-nation treatment, national treatment, fair and equitable treatment, expropriation and nationalization, investment insurance and dispute settlement as well as wider issues relating to the criticisms of the investment treaty arbitration system. 

This course is to introduce Chinese and international students to the general knowledge of renewable energy (RE), including global energy needs; RE sources and potential; processes for RE generation, usage, storage and transportation; local applicability; and current frontiers of developments, to then guide students to more specialized areas of technical, environmental or policy-based aspects, with special focus on system integration and sustainable development. The general knowledge includes basic concepts in energy and energy systems, types of energy and their supply and demand, and major categories of RE sources and potential. The course will then move on to bioenergy, introducing various categories such as energy crops, agricultural and industrial waste, municipal waste, and algae as RE feedstock, and outline the related thermal, physical, chemical and biological processes. The material will then be examined through integrated lenses such as i) process optimization, ii) integration into existing energy and economy network, and iii) balanced sustainable development objectives.

The course explores the concept and principles of marketing. It reflects upon the factors that affect markets, demand and supply, the range of stakeholders associated with any given market, the function that marketing fulfills for organizations, customers, consumers and society more broadly, and the key principles and practice of marketing. In this way, it provides an introduction to essential concepts associated with marketing and consumption, while also highlighting interconnections between marketing and other fields of study.

This lab course (Praktikum) trains in video encoding and transmission over communication networks. A particular focus will be on wireless and mobile networks, which are becoming increasingly important. After a successful completion the students are capable of encoding video clips, assessing the video quality using objective video quality metrics, and streaming the video. The students will further acquire the basics in the field of wireless communication - interference, broadcast communication medium, rate and power control. They will build up technical expertise on MAC and routing protocol behaviour in wireless mesh networking environments through various experiment set-up and performance evaluations.

This course introduces some of the key themes and concepts common to ancient Chinese philosophy and Greek philosophy, such as nature, wisdom, and knowledge, have often been discussed and studied in their own terms. We wish to bring the two traditions of thought together and see what happens when one meets her doppelganger.

We examine and compare some important themes and concepts common to both ancient Chinese philosophy and Greek philosophy. We will discuss in turn “saint and sage”, “knowing and ignorance”, “nature”, and “change”. Each week’s class consists of two lecture sessions (one Chinese and one Greek) and a subsequent discussion session.

Since the first discovery of a planet around the star 51 Pegasi in 1995, about six thousand planets have been discovered outside our solar system. This led to the conclusion that both stars and planets are common in the universe. This course is designed to learn stars and planets and is divided into three sections: Solar System Dynamics; Stellar Structure and Evolution, and Formation of Stars and Planets.

This course explores how economic theory can help us to design and evaluate public policy. The main focus of the course is to study basic notions, models, and results of public economics. Primary attention is given to the expenditure side of the economy, especially to externalities, public goods, social choice, and local public goods. The course takes examples from environmental and tax policy as well as the analysis of projects and inequality. Students take a modern microeconomics approach to tackle inefficiency problems in public economics.

This course focuses on the role of the government in the economy. It provides an understanding of the reasons for government intervention in the economy, analyzing the benefits of possible government policies, and the response of economic agents to the government's actions. The course covers social insurance and tax policy, and related issues, such as inequality and budget deficits.

This course examines modern predictive modelling techniques, with application to realistically large data sets. Case studies will be drawn from business, industrial, and government applications.

Economic inequalities are prevalent and persistent around the world. In this seminar, we will tackle the question of how economic inequality intersects with the political realm. In the first half of the seminar, students will gain an overview of the national and global structure of inequality along indicators like income and wealth. We will analyze, what perceptions of inequality people have and which beliefs accompany them. Furthermore, we will engage with theories on how one’s economic circumstances might impact political preferences and behavior.  In the second half, we will look at studies connecting people’s economic realities and their policy preferences, policy responsiveness, political participation and voting behavior. We will especially focus on redistributive and economic policy priorities as well as radical voting patterns.