Maastricht University - School of Business and Economics

The course teaches the economics of transition and resilience. The focus is on understanding the relevant phenomena and discussing the importance of resilience at the individual, firm (micro), and economy wide (macro) level as well as understand why rationally bounded agents and competitive markets cause resilience to be less than efficient. The course results in students designing feasible policies and institutional reforms that can promote resilience at one of the levels identified above. In this course, work on a challenge, provided by the European Commission's DG ECFIN, unit Economics of Transition and Resilience. This current and real-world policy challenge is our guide throughout the course. Students prepare a policy brief for the Commission and present it in Brussels. The course combines an existing group project with an individual learning journey, where you get a chance to apply what you have learned creatively and present the results professionally.

The course History of Economic Thought provides a broad overview of the history of economics as a science. The major schools of economic thought and many of the greatest economic thinkers in history are explored. Their contributions, taking into account the proper historical context are studies. The course emphasizes not only the strengths of the theories, but also their deficiencies and the various ways in which other economists have dealt with these deficiencies. Knowledge and understanding of first year and second year microeconomics and macroeconomics (intermediate level) is required.

The course presents an introduction to the economic theory of the public sector. The topics covered include public goods, externalities, education, health care, pensions, redistribution, collective decision making and cost-benefit analysis.  A prerequisite for this course is a basic course in microeconomics.

This course addresses one of the most important contemporary issues - responsible data use. The concept of responsible data is based on understanding the individual and societal collective duty to prioritize and respond to the ethical, legal, and social challenges coming from the use of data. The key elements of responsible data use - data privacy, data protection, and data ethics - are discussed in detail. The main feature of the course is to bring all these three elements together and to discuss them in the context of the contemporary legal and technological environment as well as future development.