Detailed programme by subject

CLUSTER : MACRO & FINANCE

Objectives:
This option aims to provide the students with an understanding of the drivers of business cycle fluctuations and the policy responses enacted by governments, central banks and regulators in response to these swings. The sort of questions addressed are the following. What drives recessions and expansions? How can we forecast business cycle dynamics? How do the economic effects of unexpected events (shocks) propagate through the economic system? What monetary, fiscal and macroprudential policies can be put in place to address them?  
Overall this strand has a strong quantitative and data-oriented component and will provide the students with an understanding of the models and the econometric techniques used to understand the causes of business cycle dynamics and the policy responses enacted, as well as technique to forecast its evolution.

Clusters : Macro & Finance ; Public affairs

L'objectif de cette option est de sensibiliser les étudiants aux effets attendus des décisions de politique économique. L’accent porte sur les politiques qui ont pour but de modifier les décisions privées et qui affectent les agrégats macroéconomiques. Il tient compte des interdépendances entre différents marchés et de l'évolution du cadre décisionnel européen. Les étudiants apprennent également à manipuler un outil informatique de simulation de l’économie belge.
Au terme de l’option, l’étudiant a acquis une capacité à :
• discerner les conditions sous lesquelles des politiques économiques sont souhaitables, même en l’absence d’externalité explicite ou de volonté de redistribution ;
• évaluer les stratégies européennes adoptées pour répondre aux défis économiques et budgétaires ;
• identifier et quantifier les effets macroéconomiques attendus des décisions de politique économique en Belgique ;
• choisir les politiques à mettre en œuvre pour atteindre les objectifs économiques qu'il s'est fixé.

CLUSTERS : MACRO & FINANCE; FIRM STRATEGIES AND MARKETS

Objectives:
The “Financial markets” option prepares the students to the management of financial risk at the level of a firm, a bank or any portfolio of assets and activities.  It studies and measures how risk originates in market movements (a.o. volatility), in leverage, in asset quality, liquidity and maturity, and in asymmetric information.   Diversification, hedging and mutualisation of risk are studied and put in the context of various situations and economic actors.  Students are also introduced into the processing of information produced by markets and by financial intermediaries.  The three courses take three different points of view, one starts from the financing of the firm (corporate finance), the second one starts from the management of a bank and of other financial institutions (including insurance companies, pension funds and market infrastructure), the third one starts from interest rates and credit risk.   The pedagogical approach is mixed in all three courses: next to the presentation of concepts and tools by the professor, students are asked to look at data, discuss challenging questions and write or present brief reports on scientific papers, case studies or data analysis.

CLUSTERS : MACRO & FINANCE; FIRM STRATEGIES AND MARKETS

Objectives:
The courses in this option will discuss important concepts in monetary, financial economics, banking and montary policy, focusing on both domestic and international aspects. Issues that will be addressed include, for instance, the objectives and implementation of monetary policy, the transmission channels of monetary policy and its impact on the main macroeconomic variables, the interactions between financial markets and the real economy, the determination of interest rates and exchange rates, the choice of exchange rate regimes, the analysis of banking crisis and exchange rate crisis.

CLUSTERS : SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT; PUBLIC AFFAIRS

This option tackles the challenges facing economic development policies in a context of environmental challenges. What are the tools to fight poverty and inequality? Are governments and societies willing and able to use these tools? Are development policies compatible with a sustainable use of natural resources? What are the policy options to protect the environment?

CLUSTERS : SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT; MACRO & FINANCE

Objectives:
This option studies driving forces of economic growth and structural change and presents the foundations of stabilization policies in a context of increasingly globalized economies. Which policies are effective in correcting disturbances that spill over across countries? How do migration and the demographic transition affect factor accumulation and innovation? To what extent does the diffusion of innovation across borders help poor countries to catch up? How to promote inclusive growth ?

CLUSTERS : PUBLIC AFFAIRS; SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Headline:
This option aims to provide students with rigorous methods to understand, design and assess public policy. It proposes useful tools to develop effective, evidence-based solutions and equip students with knowledge and understanding needed to reform and enhance public policies – from the design to the implementation. There is special attention to the formal and quantitative methods in the framing, analysis, and resolution of public policy problems as well as on the practical implementation (the so-called “tinkering and fixing approach to public policy with hands on approach).

Perspectives: Three perspectives on public policy are developed:  
-Doing the right thing (prescriptive approach based on operational and relevant objectives);
-Doing things right (the impact and implementation approach with tinkering and fixing in practice)
-Balancing conflicting interests: the “making of” public policy   (politics and interest groups)

CLUSTERS : PUBLIC AFFAIRS; FIRM STRATEGIES AND MARKETS

Objectives:
The three courses forming this option aim to acquaint students with traditional and more recent topics in labour economics and to encourage the development of independent research interests and an ability to apply economic theory and econometrics to real-life problems with a labour dimension.
Addressed topics include the question of the future of work (in the presence of rapid technological and demographic changes; but also the energy transition); unemployment and earnings inequalities (causes and remedies); the role of labour market legislation (minimum wage, employment protection, …), labour taxation, social norms, and social partners (unions…) in wage and employment determination; the contribution of the division of labour and human capital to labour productivity and earnings; the labour vs. capital distribution of income, the origins of gender wage inequality and discrimination on the labour market; and human resources topics (the role and limits of monetary incentives and promotions and the internal labour market inside firms).
To analyse such questions, students need tools. The proposed courses will cover the theories of labour supply and labour demand, the interaction between them under perfect and mainly imperfect competition; these courses discuss labour market (dis)equilibrium, the determinants and consequences of labour productivity, and personnel economics (i.e. the application of economics to traditional questions in human resources management). There is particular emphasis on the interaction between theoretical and empirical modelling. Students will learn to interpret econometric results and to analyse microdata.

CLUSTERS : SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT; PUBLIC AFFAIRS; FIRM STRATEGIES AND MARKETS

Objectives:
This option starts from an observation: the "economy" is also a social construct. The module "Economy and Society" aims to develop economic analysis, with particular emphasis on institutionalist perspectives in economics, in dialogue with other social sciences. The objective is to develop an epistemological pluralism and of insights including within economics, in order to better understand the institutional pluralism that characterizes our societies: the economy is not only composed by consumers, workers and for profit enterprises interacting on markets but also of institutions and public policies that regulate these markets, non-profit organizations, social enterprises,...

Various themes are discussed, for which the cross-discipline is particularly fruitful, such as a critical analysis of the foundations and evolution of capitalism, ecological and social transition, social innovation,  social policies and protection, social enterprises, third sector and, more generally, the interdependence between economy and society.

At the end of this option, students will be able to analyze the diversity of institutions and organizations that make up our economies. They will be able to develop a multidisciplinary perspective at economic facts, to integrate their analyses into socio-political contexts and to work with specialists from other disciplines.

CLUSTERS : PUBLIC AFFAIRS; FIRM STRATEGIES AND MARKETS

Objectives:
Recent decades saw turbulent and disruptive changes in many markets, especially in the digital economy. Some innovative firms like GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, or Microsoft) disrupted markets thought their new and innovative products, creating huge benefits. But also over the last decades, the markups of firms increased in many markets, suggesting competition is less effective.
This option tackles challenges about firm strategies in markets related to innovation and competition policies. What drives firms to offer new innovative products and to compete with each other? Which strategies do firms apply to benefit from their innovations, or to relax competition and gain a dominant position? When does innovation and competition actually benefit consumers and society? What are the tools of policymakers to induce innovation and competition to the benefit of society?

CLUSTERS : FIRM STRATEGIES AND MARKETS; SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Objectives:
The strong expansion of international trade and the development of global value chains in the last decades has had a profound impact on modern economies. The international division of production, a potential engine of growth, has inevitably raised questions about the distribution of its gains, as well as its social and environmental impact. Within countries, the urban-rural divide has become a source of economic and political concern, and has raised a fear of disconnection between unequal regions. This OS will help students develop their critical thinking on these questions, based on rigorous theoretical and empirical analyses.
We will stress on the key challenges faced both by firms as well as by policy makers in a more integrated world. From the perspective of firms, the spatial organization of production is a major challenge for firms. Should firms locate their establishment in densely populated areas and benefit from agglomeration economies? Should they offshore part of their production abroad? How do they fare in ever more integrated markets? From a policy perspective, should countries protect their local industries through tariffs or other measures? Should regions compete through subsidies to attract investment? What are the best tools to address the distributive, political and environmental issues of globalization?

Useful skills: Beyond gaining analytical rigor in a policy-relevant area of economics, the students following this OS will acquire and hone a valuable set of quantitative skills for the job market. In the International Trade course, students will learn how to manipulate and analyze very large datasets on trade flows. As part of the Economic Geography Course, students will be introduced to Geographic Information System (GIS) methods using ArcGIS, QGIS and Python. The course will cover the essential aspects of working with GIS, including assembling, storing, displaying and analyzing geographically referenced data including data from satellite images, aerial images, remote sensing data, old maps and other sources. By the end of the course, students will acquire the necessary skills to undertake the GIS applications themselves.

L'option « Advanced Economic Analysis I » est réservée aux étudiants de la finalité approfondie du master 120, et leur est fortement recommandée. Elle offre la possibilité d'appliquer à des champs particuliers de l'économie les méthodes d'analyse les plus avancées.