Economics

With the different food crisis and increased protectionism, agriculture is coming back in the policy makers' agendas. Food security, food sovereignty, and sustainability are now central to the debate. This course provides an understanding of the main challenges facing the world food markets. It introduces the basis of agricultural economics and policy with a particular focus on the European Common Agricultural Policy. The role of international institutions and trade liberalization is also discussed, in particular concerning developing countries. Agricultural specificities in the WTO and regional negotiations are detailed. Finally, policy evaluation tools are briefly presented, based on some examples.

This course introduces the basic elements of economic geography, such as the location, spatial pattern of economic activities, the distribution and exploitation of resources, and land use. It also examines the case of regional development, focusing on the features, problems, and alternatives of human land use.

Economic Geography is the study of the unequal distribution of the world’s resources and economic activity in the global space economy. While the geographic scale of analysis can vary - from a firm, to a cluster or community, to a city, to a country or a region, there is also an emphasis on the relationships between activities taking place within and across these various scales and ‘the global’. Economic factors exert an important influence, yet other factors such as cultural and political should not be ignored. This course highlights the geographic logic of economic activities in space, and relies on other relevant explanations when necessary to understand contemporary economic geographies. This course places particular emphasis on historical and contemporary economic events that have shaped East Asia. Also, there is an educational component to this course, particularly when it comes to energy, the environment, and the role of education as a tool to help foment positive changes for tomorrow’s society

This course offers a study of econometric methods at an intermediate level, with an emphasis on applications from macroeconomics and finance, the choice of an adequate model, the testing of assumptions, and the interpretation of results. The topics covered include modelling non-stationary time series and error correction models. The course discusses topics including the proper use of econometric methods in economic and business research; how to use the basic toolkit of econometrics, including software (EViews, Stata); and how to interpret applied econometric studies and how to evaluate them with regard to their theoretical and practical relevance.

The course introduces the objectives and implementations of Competition Policy such as antitrust institutions, its member states, and the US. Participants learn how to evaluate the goals and their legal implementation from an economic point of view. Such an (empirical and theoretical) economic analysis enables participants to criticize existing Competition Law and to suggest improvements. These findings are applied to landmark antitrust cases and ongoing controversies among competition policy scholars. The course starts with an overview of international antitrust institutions, thereby covering the major systems of competition policy in the EU and the US, as well as suggested or recently implemented frameworks in developing countries and transition economies. The course then continues with a theoretical and empirical identification of market power – a necessary condition for any anticompetitive practice. The following sessions provide an economic analysis of the major fields of competition policy such as the fight against collusion, merger regulation, and the abuse of a dominant position. For each field, students apply modern theories of strategic firm behavior to explain when and why firms indeed act in an anticompetitive way. These insights are then utilized to develop guidelines for antitrust authorities. Finally, these recommendations are taken as a benchmark for an evaluation of existing antitrust policy schemes. The course makes excessive use of case studies to illustrate and test the policy recommendations. Prerequisite for this course is knowledge and understanding of microeconomics. Exchange students need to major in economics.

The long-run development and international economic relations of developing countries are chosen as the major topic of this course. The long-run growth section deals with structural change from agriculture to industry and services, institutions, distribution, population, education, health, taxation and government expenditure, agriculture, and other resources. The international relations section relates growth to migration, aid, international trade, and foreign debt, the latter including financial crises.

Students research a self-chosen topic and develop an extended research essay under the direct tutelage of an appointed mentor. Students engage in conversation with teachers who are experts in the subject being studied. These tutorials allow students to develop their own ideas under the direct supervision of a tutor.