Government - investor, risk-taker, innovator

The documentary features a talk of the US-American writer and economic theorist Jeremy Rifkin summarising the main points of his 2011 book "The Third Industrial Revolution."

This course will introduce key concepts, theories and methods from socioeconomics. The first part of the course, will deal with the main economic actors and how their interactions are governed. Markets are seen as sets of social institutions. Institutions shape how consumers, firms and other economic actors behave. While it is difficult to understand how novelty emerges, we can study the conditions that are conducive to innovation. We will review how economic performance, social progress and human wellbeing are measured and what progress has been made. In the second part of the course, we will study a specific macroeconomic model that accounts for biophysical boundaries and inequality.

This course provides future change makers in public and private sectors with a comprehensive overview on the structures and actors that shape markets.