Maastricht University - School of Business and Economics

The purpose of this course is to study how investors (both retail and institutional) construct and manage portfolios. The course follows the investment process investors follow in real life. That is from Asset Liability Management to Strategic and Tactical Asset Allocation to Portfolio Management, Security Selection, and finally Trading. Each week the course studies a different asset class. Next to traditional assets like listed stocks we look at the added value of real estate, mutual funds, hedge funds, and private equity in order to build diversified portfolios. Finally the course introduces a new development in professional asset management; Socially Responsible Investing (SRI). The course studies the impact of SRI on portfolio return and risk. All topics are explored via real life cases using actual data.

The course Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practices introduces students to a range of topics in the field of entrepreneurship and links both entrepreneurial theory as well as practice. Critical questions like who, why, when, and where start-ups embark on their entrepreneurial journey, are covered during this course. The course seeks to introduce the students to the vast literature about entrepreneurship and business start-ups and it challenges students to connect this literature to actual cases. The course covers aspects like entrepreneurial competences, regional eco-systems, opportunity recognition, appropriation, female and minority entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial success, etc. From a more practical standpoint, it explores how to put together an entrepreneurial team, develop approaches for evaluating the market reception, and discover the value creation potential of one’s venture idea.

The course focuses on the application of techniques in the area of Operations Management. Covered topics include forecasting, material requirements planning, routing, and scheduling of assembly lines. Addressing these topics, several quantitative techniques (mostly heuristics and metaheuristics) that have shown to be successful in these areas are applied to examples and exercises. The course combines cases, exercises, and discussions, facilitated by your tutor and the students themselves. Prerequisites for this course are basic knowledge of the role and scope of operations management within business; advanced mathematical skills; ability to understand quantitative models and concepts and the application of such models and concepts; moderate level of understanding of simulation; moderate level of knowledge concerning linear programming.

The goals of this course are to (i) acquire a structured insight into the important role of the state in modern market economies, (ii) learn about the functioning and performance of the state and its interactions with markets, and (iii) understand and critically reflect upon recent developments and discussions concerning issues of the public sector like inequality, taxation, or climate protection. The topics include (i) taxation, redistribution, inequality, poverty, and fairness, (ii) market failures such as incomplete information, public goods, and externalities, as well as (iii) political decision-making and elections. These topics are analyzed from a normative (welfare economic) as well as from a positive (explanatory) perspective, with emphasis on the relevance and limitation of traditional economic theory.

This course examines historical knowledge about the process of productivity growth since the Middle Ages. It cover the standard neoclassical (Solow) growth model and some augmentations; basic endogenous growth models; and the process of productivity growth.