University College London

The course provides an overview of research in behavioral economics, a field of economics that draws on knowledge in psychology to capture important aspects of human behavior and social interactions that standard economic models cannot explain. Topics include heuristics and biases, decision making under uncertainty, prospect theory, reference dependence, intertemporal choice, social preferences, bounded rationality, as well as nudges. Throughout this course, students link theory to practice and discuss empirical applications in areas and topics such as consumer choice, saving behavior, procrastination, education, labor supply, finance, and policy making.

On this course students learn some of the basic and most important questions that political thinkers have struggled with over the ages, including: What does it mean to come together in a political community? What is a politics of fear?  And what might be a politics of hope? What is the relationship between politics and violence and war? Between politics and morality? How does politics balance the claims of order with the claims of liberty? And how can we use politics to change the world? Through close engagement with core texts that include Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Schmitt, Arendt, Havel and Foucault, this course helps students come to understand the key coordinates of political experience and political activity.

Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries have revolutionized portable electronics; from mobiles to laptops, Li-ion batteries are omnipresent within modern society. Furthermore, we are now seeing a global shift within the automotive industry towards the adoption of electric vehicles, predicted to be a trillion £ market by 2050. This course requires no prior knowledge of battery technology and cover all major aspects, from fundamental operation through to commercial application. This includes tours of cutting-edge research facilities, external speakers from the likes of NASA and perspectives covering: government policy, industrial production, project management, commercial business and marketing.

The course provides students with an introduction to the major ancient genre of comedy and will enable them to understand Greek comedy both in its historical context and as a timeless example of the importance of comedy. General and thematic topics may include the origins of comedy and its ritual context; the dramatic festivals of Athens; the staging and performance of comedy (including evidence from archaeology and vase-painting); the development of the genre; the travesty of myth in comedy; the nature of humor; the role of abuse and obscenity; self-referentiality, parody, intertextuality and allusion; plot-construction and characterization; audience-reception and dramatic illusion; and the function of the chorus.

This course offers an introduction to network science and its major applications within economics. It provides an introduction to the fundamentals of graph theory; develops an understanding of the main network effects; imparts an ability to recognizes and analyzes how networks affect market behavior; illustrates some widely used concepts for the evaluation of networks.