Please note: the information in the course manual is binding.
At the end of the course the student is:
- familiar with the breadth of topics in regional science, including those at its scientific frontier.
- able to see geo-economic events in an evolutionary perspective.
- able to describe and understand pressing current issues of e.g. uneven growth, (urban) real estate, and migration using a healthy mixture of economic and geographic insights.
The course also covers the following aspects of academic and analytical skills:
- you learn to employ geographical-economical reasoning on a variety of new topics in a creative yet clear manner.
- you are able to interpret the outcomes of a simplified geo-economic model;
- you are able to perform a hedonic pricing analysis.
- you are able to apply skills of analytical reading and to produce a piece of (convincing) argumentative writing.
- you are able to justify, implement, and interpret a binary choice model.
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This course represents the final instalment of your Geography minor. Having acquired geographical glasses to match your economic insights, we will investigate a range of current issues at the intersection of the two fields. These are fields of on-going research and debate but also of great societal relevance. The overarching theme of these topics are differences in wealth and economic dynamism between regions and the role of transformation processes that may influence the distribution of economic activity.
The course approaches this theme via four interrelated topics. First, we consider concentration of economic activity through theories of convergence and divergence. We study the famous Krugman “core-periphery” model, for which he won the Nobel prize in 2008. Second, we consider an often undervalued branch of spatial economics, but one which has large implications for today’s urban world, and even more so in the crowded Netherlands: that of real estate. Third, we turn to the cutting-edge field of evolutionary economic geography, focusing particularly on regional resilience and how regions’ economic structures develop and adapt over time. Fourth, we will talk about migration, a mechanism that is both cause and consequence of socio-economic shifts in developed and developing countries. The course features a range of guest lectures by specialists on these topics.
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