Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po)

This course provides a critical introduction to Buddhism and interrogates the origins and transhistorical resonances of Buddhist thought, practice, and praxis. It examines the possibility of the Buddhist turn in critical theory, one which must be irreverent and far reaching in its approach, and engages with a polyphony of voices ranging from lamas and practitioners to psychoanalysts and philosophers. The course explores whether Buddhism can function as a comprehensive framework for rethinking philosophy, politics, psychology, and the aesthetic in our current moment. It rethinks debates concerning what Buddhism really is (religion, psychology, empiricism, spirituality, tools for living, etc.) and explores how Buddhism problematizes commonplace understandings of belief and reason, mind and body, idealism and materialism, immanence and transcendence, ontology and anti-foundationalism, dream and reality, desire and gratification, and pain and pleasure. The radical Buddha is rediscovered as both a person and allegorical nexus for rethinking the condition of the world and the condition of being in the world.

This course introduces students to EU competition law. It examines agreements which may restrict competition such as cooperation agreements between competitors, vertical agreements, and cartels. It also examines abuses of dominant position and merger control regulations. Through each of these issues, the course provides an understanding of how EU competition law views the market and competitors. It also emphasize the central role of concepts such as market power, efficiency, and market entry. Finally, the course introduces students to the Digital Market Act.

At a time of economic and health crises, structural unemployment and the densification of international labor flows, the forms of employment, and the work situations that result from them, are very heterogeneous. While the "Northern" countries largely exploit the labor force of the Southern countries, inequalities in employment and working conditions are also growing within each country. A large proportion of the workforce is vulnerable on the labor market, and subject to precarious employment that calls into question the most protective forms of employment. In Europe, for example, full-time salaried work on open-ended contracts is becoming less and less the norm, while new service jobs are flourishing, offering only very low paid working hours to workers. This course asks how we can explain the massification of low-quality jobs and work situations around the world. Students consider how the globalization of the labor market increases inequalities between workers. Prerequisites: Two years of Sociology coursework is recommended. A previous course of Sociology of Work is not especially required.

This course investigates how the early childhood period contributes to the reproduction of social inequalities, focusing on the role of early education and care, and on the interplay between micro-level characteristics with the policy context. Several interdisciplinary concepts are introduced, as well as the key policy evaluation tools, as applied to (early) education and care. The course discusses and questions current concepts in the early childhood literature and their relevance to the reproduction of social inequalities; examines early education and care; explores cross-national differences in early childhood policies and current policy debates; considers the concepts behind key policy evaluation tools; and applies acquired knowledge to evaluate early education programs and their role in the production of inequalities. Sessions are interactive and require participation.

This course introduces how to find relevant and exhaustive data, how to compute and analyze data, how to propose and objective assessment of the data, and how to recommend appropriate policy. It decrypts main statistical sources by economics and policy makers to formulate their decisions. Topics include surveys, GDP, unemployment, imbalances, and leading indicators. The course covers the process for determining these data points as well as the meaning embedded within them.

This course provides an introduction to Market Finance, with both an empirical and theoretical content. The objective is twofold: first, to give students an overview of how financial markets behave, and their main empirical features; second, to provide them with conceptual tools to understand these stylized facts via economic notions: the definition of risk, the quantity of risk, and the price of risk. The course starts with the introduction of these concepts. Via interactive games and experiments, students learn why the definition of risk, and how taking risk should be compensated for, may be complex, individual specific, and time varying. Various financial assets are covered in light of the definitions and concepts studied. In the second part of the course, the empirical evidence observed in financial markets over the past 100 years is studied. Students learn the main facts on financial market behaviors and how the evidence informs our understanding of investors' risk expectations and risk valuations. The pricing of SRI (Socially Responsible Investing) assets is discussed, as well as market behaviors since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis.