Economics

This course introduces and analyzes various economic problems. The class focuses on the following questions: How are national income, prices, interest rates, unemployment rates, employment, wages, consumption, and investment determined and what are the relationships between them? By what principle is national income decided and allocated? Why do booms and recessions occur and how can they be controlled? By what process does the economy experience growth? What place does the Korean economy occupy in the world and how are exchange rates and balance of payments determined? What effect does the government's economic policy have on economic activities and how are we to evaluate the merits and demerits of those economic policies? 

Topics include definitions of wealth, issues of growth and wealth, business cycle theories, classical dichotomy and quantity theory of money, and monetary and fiscal policies. 

This course teaches microeconomic analysis to let you explore important contemporary questions and special emphasis is given to the question how public policy can change (economic) outcomes.  Students will learn how to understand economic problems by focusing on their key characteristics, choosing the relevant microeconomic mechanisms and developing a solid intuition. The use of mathematics is minimal (in particular, with no calculus) and the emphasis of instruction is on graphical analysis and economic intuition. Precise topics and readings will be announced and are selected to be of current interest, such as the impact of the pandemic and environmental concerns.

This course offers an introduction to international macroeconomic theory and develops the main tools for macroeconomic policy analysis. Students study the balance of payments and the causes and consequences of global imbalances, followed by an in-depth study of the determination of exchange rates, money, and prices in open economies. They discuss the costs and benefits of different nominal exchange rate regimes and their sustainability, as well as examine the causes and consequences of debt and default, speculative attacks, and financial crises.

Why do cities exist? Why do firms cluster? Why is economic activity not equally distributed across space? This course addresses the central questions of why cities emerge, what roles cities will continue to play in the economy, and what determines the rise and fall of cities. Technically, the course provides an introduction to the field of urban economics. It focuses on stylized facts, basic microeconomic concepts, and empirical applications. Special
attention is paid to social problems in cities, including housing, public transit, crime, and the role of local governments. The course aims to make students familiar with economic tools and concepts useful for the analysis of urban issues. More generally, students learn to apply economic theory to real-world problems. A special focus is placed on evidence and examples from Berlin. With its long and vibrant history, Berlin provides an excellent environment to study and explore various features of the economics of cities. Field trips allow participants to learn more about the past and the future of cities, their functions, their internal spatial structure, and their dynamics.

This course focuses on the applications of game theoretical and empirical approaches to the understanding of contemporary political issues. During the lectures, students cover some seminal and some most recent models to think critically about the topics studied. In addition, they go over papers testing or related to the theories we cover. Students learn to assess critically the usefulness and limitations of theories and empirics alike. As such, this course allows students to understand how the tools they acquired in GV225 – Public Choice (or equivalent course) and GV249 – Research Design (or equivalent course) can be combined to study important political questions. Themes covered change every year as a function of current debates in the scholarly community and of pressing problems in the world at large. In recent years, the topics studied in the course have included, among others, populism, media and democracy, autocratic politics, terrorism. Questions covered during the lectures have included the sources of populists’ success, the effect of biased media on political outcomes, the role of violence in securing autocratic regimes, or the evaluation of counter-terrorist policies, among many others.

This course builds on the knowledge acquired in Macroeconomics I (EC1B5). Students use macroeconomic analysis to explore important contemporary questions and special emphasis is given to how public policy can change economic outcomes. Students learn how to understand economic problems by focusing on the key characteristics, choosing the relevant mechanisms and developing a solid intuition. The use of mathematics is minimal (in particular, with no calculus) and the emphasis of instruction is on graphical analysis and economic intuition. Precise topics and readings are announced and are selected to be of current interest.