Main Content

Classes 2023

 

July 1 July 2-3 July 4-7 week-
end		 July 10 July 11-14 week-
end		 July 17 July 18-21 week-
end		 July 24 July 25
Arrival Orientation Class 1 Test
Class 1		 Class 2 Test
Class 2		 Class 3 Test
Class 3		 Departure

Description:

  • 1: Statistical Analysis of Economic Data

    Instructor
    Bernd Hayo is professor of economics at the University of Marburg. He taught courses at other universities in Germany (Bonn, Cottbus, Frankfurt, Göttingen) as well as in other countries (College of Europe, Belgium; Kobe University, Japan; University of Canterbury, New Zealand; Georgetown University, USA). His research is mainly empirical and involves a variety of topics, particularly monetary and fiscal policy, political economy, and socio-economics.

    Course description
    • The course discusses the empirical analysis of economic data.
    • Statistical research methods are presented in the context of well-known theories in business administration and economics.
    • Research methods are applied to real world data.
    • After a successful completion of the course, students should be able to
    1. make educated comments on empirical studies and
    2. conduct their own empirical analyses.
    • Statistical topics covered include basic statistics, regression, and time series techniques.
    • Economic topics are from finance, economic growth, business cycle, monetary economics, and international economics.

    The course covers a variety of topics including the (1.) the principles of empirical research, (2.) the basic econometric model (including the treatment of time-based data), (3.) financial applications (e.g. the CAPM-model and international financial markets), (4.) trends vs. cycles, (5.) growth and investment models (including instrumental variables) as well as (6.) causality issues and lagged models.

  • 2: International Corporate Governance - Concepts & Cases

    Instructors
    Sascha H. Mölls
    Tim Burger

    Course description
    In recent years countries around the world have either adopted the capital market-oriented International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) or adjusted their national financial accounting standards accordingly. With the IFRS being deeply linked to a corporate governance system typically found in the US or Great Britain, companies are expected to primarily be financed by equity and/or debt traded on well-developed capital markets. Employed managers (and not the equity holders themselves) manage large companies and strictly base (strategic) decisions on market parameters. In such systems, ownership structures are characterized by high rates of free float and labor markets are mostly deregulated allowing for a “hire and fire”-philosophy. Hence, the question arises if a strictly capital market-based standard setting is suitable for other countries in the light of national corporate governance systems which differ from the US-system due to unique path dependencies, cultural differences as well as socio-economic traditions. If these unique can only slowly be adjusted or might even prevail, the development of national regulatory policies and changes of the institutional framework are deemed ineffective. Thus, the introduction capital market-based reforms (e.g. the introduction of the “International Financial Reporting Standards” (IFRS) in countries around the world) might not be suitable for all countries. Such a situation could result in a regulatory paradox of “legal form over economic substance”.

    The course aims at exploring some of the sketched differences by a conceptual as well as an empirical analysis of selected topics from the field of “comparative corporate governance/financial accounting”. In the conceptual first part of the course, participants get to know the fundamentals of corporate governance, will in-depth analyze the legal view of corporations with respect to decision-making processes and the different roles of the players involved, will be dealing with international aspects and differences of corporate governance structures as well as the fundamentals of international financial reporting (in comparison to US-GAAP). From an economic standpoint, all the aforementioned structural differences not only shape ‘specific’ firm characteristics (e.g. owner- vs. manager-controlled firms with diverging incentive and monitor-ing requirements as well as different accounting regimes and policies), but ultimately determine the economic outcome of corporations (by e.g. – among others – diverging cost of capital due to different financing patterns) as well as the ‘social perfor-mance’ with respect to sustainable strategic and operational decisions/reporting. Referring to all these differences, the course will provide a step-by-step procedure by accompanying short lecture units by several real-world case studies to illustrate the core of the specific problem under investigation.

    Equipped with the necessary conceptual groundwork, participants are supposed to work on a final presentation based on an empirical study in the second part of the course. Based on samples of the 100 biggest corporations from countries around the world, participants are to analyze and interpret the structures and environments of large publicly-traded companies empirically to derive and discuss implications for the standard setting process with regard to corporate governance issues as well as to an appropriate financial accounting regime. Topics include – among others – a wide variety of issues such as ownership and control, corporate financing and additional capital market-based parameters (e.g. corporate ratings), manager remuneration schemes, the effectiveness of soft laws (e.g. codes of ethics) as well as the relevance of corporate social responsibility. In conclusion, participants should make a final (individual) argument concerning the following question: Are capital market-based corporate governance systems (and financial accounting standards respectively) suitable for the wide variety of economies around the world given country-specific differences?

  • 3: Sustainability Analysis - Short Course on the Science and Practice of Sustainable Development

    Instructors
    Adam Douglas Henry is a Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Environmental Politics at the University of Arizona. His research applies network analysis and computational modeling to the study of the policy process, particularly surrounding issues of environment and sustainability. Henry's work has been applied to the study of renewable energy, environmental risk, urban water sustainability, and invasive species management. Henry received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis, USA, and was a Giorgio Ruffolo Fellow in Sustainability Science at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

    Björn Vollan is professor of economics and head of the research group "Sustainable Use of Natural Resources" at the University of Marburg. He taught courses both in Germany (Mannheim, Bremen, Giessen) and abroad (Innsbruck, Austria; Beijing and Zhuhai, China). His research applies experimental designs in the field combined with surveys to studies on resource management, climate adaptation and behavioural economics.

    Course description
    How can we simultaneously promote human well-being and protect fragile ecological systems? This is the central question of sustainability science and the goal of sustainable development. This course provides an introduction to theory and methods for sustainability analysis, a term that refers to the systematic study of sustainability goals, the myriad barriers to meeting these goals, and strategies that may be used to overcome these barriers.

    Three core characteristics of sustainability analysis inform the content and organization of this course:

    1) Sustainability analysis is theoretically-grounded. As such, this course emphasizes theoretical lenses to explain the essential factors that may inhibit or enable sustainability, ranging from basic features of human behavior to the decisions of organizations and policy systems.

    2) Sustainability analysis is empirically-informed. As such, this course introduces methods of data analysis and research design to rigorously study theoretical propositions about sustainability.

    3) Sustainability analysis is solution-oriented. As such, this course deploys theory and rigorous research methods to both design and evaluate strategies to enable sustainability in the real world.

    This course is organized around five major barriers to sustainability, including: 1) path dependency of (policy) choices, 2) biased decision-making, 3) collective action dilemmas, 4) conflicts over values and beliefs, and 5) the difficulty of translating scientific knowledge about coupled human and natural systems into effective solutions.