Economics

The course explores the concept and principles of marketing. It reflects upon the factors that affect markets, demand and supply, the range of stakeholders associated with any given market, the function that marketing fulfills for organizations, customers, consumers and society more broadly, and the key principles and practice of marketing. In this way, it provides an introduction to essential concepts associated with marketing and consumption, while also highlighting interconnections between marketing and other fields of study.

This course explores how economic theory can help us to design and evaluate public policy. The main focus of the course is to study basic notions, models, and results of public economics. Primary attention is given to the expenditure side of the economy, especially to externalities, public goods, social choice, and local public goods. The course takes examples from environmental and tax policy as well as the analysis of projects and inequality. Students take a modern microeconomics approach to tackle inefficiency problems in public economics.

This course focuses on the role of the government in the economy. It provides an understanding of the reasons for government intervention in the economy, analyzing the benefits of possible government policies, and the response of economic agents to the government's actions. The course covers social insurance and tax policy, and related issues, such as inequality and budget deficits.

Students in this course explore some of the important conceptual and philosophical questions underlying physics and finance, like: How are assumptions about randomness compatible with observed forms of determinism? How is it possible to seek truth using statistical theories? What does it mean to be an atom? How does the quantum world differ from the everyday world? What explains why physical models have unexpected applications in finance? To what extent do such applications help to underpin how the prices of financial instruments are set? This course will proceed at a conceptual level that is suitable for students of all backgrounds: no background in physics is needed, and there is no advantage to having one.

This course offers an introduction to various international business disciplines including international management, international finance, international marketing, international accounting, international business operations, and international business law. It examines the vision and tools required to effectively manage the challenges that globalization, changing world markets, and cultural differences demand. This course discusses industries, competitors, regions, and markets from the perspective of practicing managers and the reasons behind global differences. Finally, it offers an overview of the different areas of international business and their contributions to the foundation of global business and management.

This class discusses the international environmental regimes (international regimes: sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations (Krasner, 1983)) and related challenges, including policy-making procedures, the role of actors (international organizations, governments, the scientific community, industry, and non-governmental organizations) which influenced that policy-making, by explaining various international environmental conventions and frameworks under the United Nations.

This course explains governance issues such as the international environmental regimes and the interactions among related international conventions and institutions; multi-level governance (international, national, and local, etc.), and the fragmentation and cohesion of governance. In addition, this course explains theories and analytical frameworks, including transnational governance, which focuses on non-state actors (e.g., cities, non-governmental organizations, and companies); transition management focused on societal systems transformations, and governance related to equity between developed and developing countries.

This course explores the main developments in monetary financial history from the 9th to the end of the 20th centuries, taking the students from the simple beginnings of medieval European monetary history to the complex financial arrangements of the modern world. The first part of the course covers the emergence of money and finance from the medieval ages to the early modern period. The second part examines the main developments in the global financial system since the 19th century. Students discuss and compare historical developments in major European and non-European countries (England, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, USA). The course teaches students the main concepts of money and finance such as financial development, financial integration, monetary policy, banking crises etc, and provides a long run perspective to the current policy debate.

This course develops theoretical and empirical understanding of spatial economic processes in order to study and evaluate a wide range of issues and policies. Particular emphasis is put on regional economies, business and worker location decisions, focusing in particular on models of the location of economic and innovation activity with a particular emphasis on regional economies. The course analyzes the New Economic Geography theories and the agglomeration of economic activity, with a particular focus on EU integration as a testing ground. Students also look at the global and local knowledge economy, focusing on core aspects of a society based on knowledge and technical progress and how this proceeds hand in hand with the enlargement of markets and the intensification of exchange. Students explore the seeming contradiction that geographically localized knowledge may be increasingly significant just as so much of our world becomes more globalized.

This course offers a systematic approach to different types of decision-making problems that allows for thoughtful, sensible, and better decisions that are effective and applicable in a real context. It focuses on the determination and criteria for comparing and assessing different alternatives (certain, uncertain, and risky). This course introduces the game theory reasoning method in a context of complete information. Specifically, it analyzes the concept of equilibrium both in situations of simultaneous and sequential decision-making, and rationalization through a process of dominant alternatives or backward induction.

This course examines the question: what is sustainable development? Other topics include: key concepts linking the economy, society, and environment; social and biophysical limits to growth; pro-growth versus post-growth perspectives on sustainable development. It also discusses current topics in sustainable development and case studies.