Will politicians advance public interest? How do lobbies affect governance? What policies will best provide collective goods? This program is designed to teach students to use economic tools to address these types of social science problems. Issues examined involve strategic behavior ranging from institution design, policy design and implementation, and decision-making.
North American Studies programme in Public Choice is a quantitative social science programme. The methods used include social choice theory, game theory, and basic microeconomic intuition/analysis. Following traditional public choice theory, the program examines how and when individual self-interest among politicians, interest groups, etc. can either help or hinder the public interest in policy design and implementation. Coursework will emphasize both practical and theoretical understanding of the issues.
In addition to building quantitative skills, this program incorporates a comparative and multidisciplinary perspective. Issues addressed draw on examples from North America and Europe in terms of evaluation.
Learning Outcomes
After completing the Master’s Degree Programme in Public Choice a student is expected to be able to:
- identify, evaluate, analyze and contribute to the international academic literature
- learn and use quantitative methods from political science, economics and sociology and apply them to social science issues
- to address issues that involve strategic behavior ranging from institution design, policy design and implementation and decision making by using quantitative tools
- understand social sciences from a comparative (North America and Europe) and multidisciplinary perspective