Electives

This module is intended for individuals who are interested in the functions of the market in modern economies and who in the course of their careers may be in positions of regulating market behaviour for public policy purposes. The focus is to identify what makes the market imperfect or cause market failures. The course will also examine the appropriate form of governmental intervention. 

The course looks at health and human development in the context of a global economy. We will study the large improvements in health that have occurred in the last two centuries due to rising incomes and technological advances in public health and heath care. These health improvements will be linked to human capital and increased worker productivity as well as longer life spans and savings for retirement. The effects of health on population growth and development will also be investigated. We will look at the welfare implications of health improvements, economic growth, and globalization. 

This module will help students to understand the concepts and practice of leadership and develop a better knowledge of public service. Students will be exposed to insights and best practices, with emphasis on the public service and learn the skills to develop into a capable leader. Students will learn to lead, anticipate the future, make decisions, know their bias, build teams, motivate, communicate, understand the public interest and become better leaders. 

This course introduces social policies – which are policies directed towards meeting a population’s social needs—can support better overall health of, as well as a more equitable distribution of health outcomes within, a population. Focusing on countries in Asia, students will be introduced to trends and challenges affecting population health, including but not limited to climate change, demographic shifts; income inequality; globalisation and migration. We will also examine how social policy across various domains (e.g. education, public health, social support, and housing) affect population health, with a focus on socially vulnerable populations and health disparities

This course is designed to improve the understanding and applications of the principles and policies of sustainability and the environment. It examines the policy challenges of achieving global sustainability where strides have been made in some respects, notably poverty alleviation, while others, strikingly climate change and mass species extinction, have accelerated at alarming rates. The course will shift attention from “implementing” what are often self-standing and competing sustainability goals, to focusing on developing “fit for purpose” policy designs for effectively and urgently prioritizing make or break sustainability conundrums.

Good governance and managing conflicting ethical demands are key skills for policy makers. This course seeks to introduce students to the ethical aspects of some major problems in global governance. Topics include foundations of ethical theory, human rights, intervention, climate change, immigration and trade. Background readings come mostly from moral philosophical, political theory and political science. Each session pays special attention to a particular policy area in the international domain and thereby combines philosophical inquiry with applied questions. The course does not have any formal prerequisites.  

Public policy today is in no small part influenced by public opinion. Public opinion is in turn influenced by a diverse set of actors in an increasingly complex media environment. Public opinion today is also made increasingly more complex by diverse interests and aspirations across different segments of society, that go beyond traditional demographic markers. How can policy-makers seek to better gather and understand public opinion to better inform policy-making? How does the evolving landscape impact public policy decision making and implementation? 

This course links public policy principles with key contemporary urban transport choices. It aims to help students from diverse countries become discerning consumers or supervisors (although not producers) of urban transport policy analysis, with enough understanding to engage critically with technical analysts. A comparative policy perspective and cases from a variety of situations (in terms of income, motorization, city size, urban structure, institutions, etc.) help reveal both universal principles and a need for local knowledge. Key sections include: 1) Introduction to fundamentals; 2) Supply and demand choices regarding urban traffic; 3) Multimodal approaches; and 4) Links with urban planning. 

This course equips students with the fundamental concepts and techniques of financial management with a special focus on their applications and implications for policy making and public management. The main topics covered in this course include: Fundamental Concepts in Financial Management, which includes Time Value of Money, Interest Rates and Bond Rating, Risk and Rates of Return, and Capital Asset Pricing Model; Assessment of Business Performance Valuation of Bonds and Stocks; Capital Budgeting; Derivatives and Risk Management; Mergers and Acquisitions; Investment Strategy; Applications of financial management concepts and techniques to policy analysis and public management. 

This project-based module allows students to develop innovative solutions to real-world policy problems. Students work in teams with external partners (government, corporate, incubators, non-profit organizations, foundations, etc.) to develop a concrete innovative “product" that addresses a specific public policy issue. Students work with their partner on a project. They participate in workshop-style lectures on key issues related to innovation including diffusion, disruption, and policy application, and on practical skills for policy innovation including design thinking, human-centered design, stakeholder analysis, and problem-solving processes. External partners reserve the right to select the student teams working on their proposed projects.

This course looks at pension systems design and public policy issues associated with retirement income provision in Singapore and internationally. It provides students with an understanding of different models of social security systems, the economics and finance of pensions, governments’ role in pension provision, and reform options. Topics covered include: rationale for state involvement; types of pension schemes; plan design and policy choices; Singapore’s Central Provident Fund scheme; fiscal sustainability of pension systems; distributional issues and risk sharing; recent reforms and policy developments; and international comparisons. A special focus is given to the implications of population ageing on pension policy.

This course teaches students how to systematically analyse complex policy problems and conduct policy design to address long-term challenges. The skillset is generic and can be applied to different domains (e.g. Transport, Environment, Energy, Health, etc.). This makes this course crucial for professionals with functions that require long-horizon thinking and decision-making. Relevant theories and techniques and their limitations covered include system analysis, actor analysis, policy networks, problem formulation, definition of goal hierarchies, information gathering, generation of a library of policy measures, analysis and selection of policy measures, multi-criteria decision making, generation of alternative solutions, and analysis of their trade-offs.  

This course introduces students to issues of diversity in contemporary organisations. The course will examine different perspectives on diversity, inclusion, and representation, their use in a global context, and their challenges and benefits for organisations. These issues will be explored through institutional, organisational, group, and individual lenses, and using a variety of theoretical and practical approaches, including psychological processes, group dynamics, and organizational interventions. These lenses will in turn be used to analyse core management issues such as recruitment, selection, and performance management.

This course introduces game theoretic tools to examine strategic behavior and its consequences for a wide range of economic, political, and social applications. We develop important techniques to better navigate strategic interactions from decision-making under risk and uncertainty, collective decision-making, agenda setting and strategic voting, negotiating and bargaining, the value of common knowledge, information disclosure with signaling and screening, participating in auctions, and designing strategyproof mechanisms in practice. We also highlight the limitations of rationality in practice and develop strategic analysis and institutional design techniques in light of individual/collective decision-making given such empirical (ir-)regularities from behavioral economics.

This course aims to broaden one's perspective on markets and marketplaces. We learn how to design markets, institutions, and organizations in practice, and analyse their allocative properties, induced incentives, and limitations, to help formulate regulatory policy. The course underscores practical takeaways in designing a wide range of markets, e.g., auctions for procurement and spectrum allocation, matching markets to assign students to schools, doctors to hospitals, and resettle refugees, centralised versus decentralised labor markets for civil servants, online market platforms, natural monopolies for electricity, and incentive schemes promoting pharmaceutical R&D. We cover issues like fairness, efficiency, simplicity, transparency, externalities, and collusion.

Will technological change lead to mass unemployment and civil unrest? This module aims to introduce students to the implications of technological changes in the labour market, through the lens of economics, sociology, demography, and other subfields of social science. One of the central themes of the module is the notion that technology holds heterogenous effects on the labour market constituents. In this course, we will delve into the sources of the heterogeneity. We will also examine and evaluate the current individual- and firm- level efforts as well as policy efforts to regulate the nature and the pace of workplace technologies.

This module provides a survey of energy transition and green transformation in Asia and related policy challenges from a global perspective. The module concentrates on three topics: (i) Energy sustainability challenges and the green transformation imperative; (ii) Efforts of Asian countries in renewable energy development; and (iii) International best practices in promoting green transformation and policy lessons for Asia/ASEAN countries.

This course takes an applied economics approach to strategic management for public policy. We introduce foundational toolsets from network theory, behavioral economics, matching theory, contract and incentive theory for designing effective institutions, efficient organizations, and robust policy implementation. Applied econometric methods will be used for data-driven policy evaluation: randomized control trials, regression discontinuity designs, survey designs, and difference-in-difference methods. We cover case studies across wide-ranging policy domains to understand why certain policies and organizations worked/failed and why. We discuss issues like leveraging behavioral economics in policy implementation, networks for optimal information dissemination, implementation of affirmative action, personnel economics, corruption, etc.

The course will explore the features, applications, benefits and risks of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Digital Currencies, Cloud, 5G, IoT, 3D Printing and Robots on social policy (education, healthcare, insurance, social safety nets), employment and wages, fiscal policy (taxation and expenditure), transport and smart cities and implications for politics and social cohesion (fake news, deep fake, election manipulation). It will explore policies and regulatory implications in terms of growth, equity, security, privacy, efficiency and risk management for Singapore. The course will be comparative in perspective and will draw from the experience of the US, China, Europe, Japan and Singapore.

This course will provide students with an overview of how the environment affects health outcomes and health behaviors. Students will examine how policies that influence the various dimensions of the environment can affect population health, even if these policies do not directly target health as an outcome. For example, building a new expressway might have unanticipated negative effects on residents nearby due to the noise generated both by construction and car-traffic. Through this course, students will gain insights on how to integrate public health considerations into policy-making and planning, and help achieve better health and health equity in urban environments.

That international politics can be conceived as a game with its own special rules is a truism for most analysts of the subject. Yet there does not exist a list of what the rules of the game are. This course will examine a list of ten possible contenders for inclusion in the list. The class will debate and dissect these “rules,” with the aim of arriving at a mutually agreeable and defensible list of the key rules of the international politics game by the end of the semester.

This course provides an overview to the study of business and politics. We will examine how politics and politicians affect the business world by analysing topics such as regulation, lobbying, corruption, taxation, and trade. We will draw from comparative and international political economy, governance research, and related disciplines such as management and economics. The course will begin by discussing the role of the state in governing markets and business behaviour. we then move forward to the discussion of the formation of business interests and preferences regarding public policy. Moreover, we will review how businesses can acquire and exert political power.

This module will introduce students to international and strategic thought in four Asian countries – China, India, Japan, and Singapore. As world power shifts towards Asia, it is vital to provide students with insights into how key Asian societies have thought about the nature of international life and how to deal with the threats and opportunities to their countries. Students will read key texts and thinkers, will make comparisons across the four sets of thinkers and will critically assess the relevance of the ideas they encounter for contemporary foreign and security policy.

This course deals with social policy issues with special reference to Southeast Asian countries. The policies analysed include those relating to ethnicity, urbanisation, housing, migration, labour, poverty and its alleviation, education and health. The ideas of state responsibility to provide for basic needs and of a social safety net are considered. 

This course is designed to improve the understanding and applications of the principles and policies of sustainability and the environment. It examines the policy challenges of achieving global sustainability where strides have been made in some respects, notably poverty alleviation, while others, strikingly climate change and mass species extinction, have accelerated at alarming rates. The course will shift attention from “implementing” what are often self-standing and competing sustainability goals, to focusing on developing “fit for purpose” policy designs for effectively and urgently prioritizing make or break sustainability conundrums.

Good governance and managing conflicting ethical demands are key skills for policy makers. This course seeks to introduce students to the ethical aspects of some major problems in global governance. Topics include foundations of ethical theory, human rights, intervention, climate change, immigration and trade. Background readings come mostly from moral philosophical, political theory and political science. Each session pays special attention to a particular policy area in the international domain and thereby combines philosophical inquiry with applied questions. The course does not have any formal prerequisites.

This module gives an overview of global health policy and issues, with special focus on changing social, economic, technological and political conditions across the diverse countries and populations of Asia. It examines the roles and relationships among major players at the global level, and different approaches taken by various international organisations and national governments in tackling health and related problems. This module will examine global health trends and issues using a macro policy framework. Significant challenges in the organisation of global health programmes and the complexities involved in international cooperation will be analysed through selected case-studies. Topics on current issues will include:- population health and development, role of international health organizations, international aid and development assistance, emerging epidemics and disasters, cross-border health issues, migration of health human resources (brain drain), international trade in health services and the future of global health.

The primary goal of this class is to evaluate the theoretical, empirical, and policy issues affecting security relations in the Asia-Pacific. The course examines the complex and sometimes turbulent inter-state interactions in the region, as well as their evolving political, economic, and security relations. Students will evaluate how existing theories of international politics apply to the Asia-Pacific and gain a deeper appreciation of the determinants for conflict and cooperation in the region.

This course will provide a comprehensive overview of the sustainable development concept and entailing public policies through an inter-disciplinary framework. The property rights will be explored while the concept of environmental valuation will be discussed. Attention will be given to urban wastewater and solid waste management by also focusing on the linkages between water-energy-food (WEF) nexus and sustainability. The role of decision-aiding tools in designing sustainable public polices will be introduced through simulation exercises. The parameters of climate change as an uncertainty factor will be presented while the role renewable energy scenarios for the future sustainable policy scenarios will be demonstrated.

This module will provide an overview of the contemporary U.S.-China relationship with particular focus on U.S. policymaking towards China. The module will review key issues that define the relationship, analyze U.S. security policy decision-making structures and consider how they shape the relationship. The course will conclude by discussing other Asian perspectives of the U.S.-China dyad and how third countries respond to shifts in the U.S.-China relationship.

This course introduces the political, economic, and security issues in the interstate relations of Southeast Asia since the end of World War II. It studies regionalism and regional cooperation and conflict in Southeast Asia with a focus on ASEAN as the epicentre of Southeast Asian regionalism. It examines how ASEAN member states have coped with various challenges and sought to manage regional order and stability.

This module is an advanced course that will provide students practical experience in the field and expose them to practitioners of political risk analysis. The module is focused on completing an assigned political risk analysis project commissioned by real-world client which will be submitted to the client at the end of the module. Students will be organized into small teams that will conduct research, analyze data, prepare a political risk report to be presented to the client. Students will develop and demonstrate key skills related to political risk analysis and client management in a real-world environment.

The SG Botanic Gardens, chicken rice, and pinisi boats - heritage is part of our lives, emotional attachments, memories, and identities. Because of its ubiquitous significance, heritage is also mobilized to facilitate international dialogue or legitimate shifts in geo-political landscapes. But whose heritage is invoked where international alliances and boundaries are concerned? How to make sense of competing heritage claims? This interdisciplinary, experiential course draws on politics, international affairs, heritage, geography and history in order to interrogate the geopolitical and economic significance of heritage. Combining theory and practice, the course also invites students to conceptualize individual “geopolitics of heritage” projects.

From cartoons to political slogans, and from military parades to data visualization, images provide a most immediate way of understanding reality. Images have similarly long played a critical role in shaping international politics and our understanding of them. Over the past decade, images have also become the main source for Deep Learning, expediting the prowess of Artificial Intelligence. This course examines how visual sources influence international political phenomena, considering the implications for both humans and AI. Students will explore theoretical and methodological debates, delve into concrete cases, and have the option to engage in filmmaking and/or exhibition curation.

The on-going wave of globalisation has changed the character of threats to human, national and international security. The present security discourse stands in major contrast to the traditional realist understanding of security that prevailed during the Cold War. This interdisciplinary, experiential learning course examines key global challenges, typically described under the umbrella of non-traditional security. The course comprises of three interlinked parts. First, a conceptual/theoretical explication of non- traditional security. Second, in-depth engagement with five non-traditional security topics climate change, migration, technology, gender equality, and food security. Three, hands-on opportunities to design topic- specific interventions.

This course focuses on how states formulate and implement their foreign policies. It is structured based on different levels of analysis: systems, state, leaders, bureaucracies/institutions, and society. The course analyses the various constraints that each of these actors face, how they interact with each other, and the processes and mechanisms through which they resolve their differences and formulate policy. It also examines the conditions in the implementation process that impact policy outcomes. Major themes include the state as rational actor, the role of personalities and their psychology, the impact of ideas and cultures, bureaucratic politics, and the role of interest groups and coalitions.

The Asia-Pacific is the most important region of the world with its economic vibrancy and strategic importance, and presents a plethora of important and puzzling security and economic challenges. In this course we will utilize various theoretical approaches to examine and explain a set of substantive issues in the international relations of the Asia-Pacific: US-China rivalry; territorial disputes; Taiwan issue; North Korean nuclear threat; Japan’s foreign policy; the so-called ‘history problem’ issue; ASEAN; security institutions; economic patterns; human rights; and environmental and aging society problem. In addition, we seek to understand the future trajectory of the Asia-Pacific.

This course focuses on application of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) in public policy which involves the systematic evaluation of the costs and benefits to determine the desirability of policies and projects. The principal objectives are to understand the conceptual foundations and apply associated analytic techniques underlying a CBA. Through practical examples and illustrations, students will learn the basic principles of CBA and the practical steps in conducting a cost-benefit study. It will equip analysts and decision makers with the necessary skills to conduct, interpret, evaluate and utilize a CBA study for informed decision making and selection of alternative policies and projects.

This module is intended for individuals who are interested in the functions of the market in modern economies and who in the course of their careers may be in positions of regulating market behaviour for public policy purposes. The focus is to identify what makes the market imperfect or cause market failures. The course will also examine the appropriate form of governmental intervention.

The course looks at health and human development in the context of a global economy. We will study the large improvements in health that have occurred in the last two centuries due to rising incomes and technological advances in public health and heath care. These health improvements will be linked to human capital and increased worker productivity as well as longer life spans and savings for retirement. The effects of health on population growth and development will also be investigated. We will look at the welfare implications of health improvements, economic growth, and globalization.

An inadvertent outcome of economic progress is pollution and environmental degradation. This tradeoff is faced by every decision-maker, and this module draws on knowledge from various disciplines in social sciences to characterize this problem and study possible policy responses. This module provides a economics and policy perspective on environmental challenges. It is divided into two parts with the first half on using economics frameworks to develop policy responses, and the second half on the process and politics of environmental policymaking. This course will equip students with skills and ways of thinking to better navigate environmental problems, policy design, and implementation.

Education is one of the most fundamental areas of policy, as education impacts many aspects of life and society. This module uses the theoretical and empirical tools of economics to study education and education policy. Major topics include the monetary and non-monetary benefits of education; educational inequality with respect to gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status; and policy issues such as compulsory schooling, girl-friendly schools, and school choice. Examples are drawn internationally.

Traditional economics, which is one of the key theoretical cornerstones of public policy, typically assumes that human behavior is rational, preferences are stable, and individuals are smart and unemotional. However, human behavior often deviates from standard assumptions due to psychological and social factors; analysis based on traditional economics can therefore misinform policies and lead to detrimental consequences. This course discusses behavioral regularities that are of potential importance for public policy. Students will be exposed to behavioral economic theory and its applications to public policy in the areas of savings, investment, healthcare, climate change, taxation, labor supply, and monetary policy. 

This course is an introduction to selected aspects of Asian economic development and the region’s interactions with the rest of the world. It will focus on developing simple analytical tools to understand key trends and macroeconomic, financial and trade policy issues that confront Asia in the world economy. Topics covered include sources of growth in the Newly Industrializing Economies (NIEs) in East Asia, the rise of China and India and their impact on the global trading system, foreign direct investment to Asia, currency crisis in Asia, Asia in the global financial system, and issues relating to Asian economic regionalism. 

This course introduces social policies – which are policies directed towards meeting a population’s social needs—can support better overall health of, as well as a more equitable distribution of health outcomes within, a population. Focusing on countries in Asia, students will be introduced to trends and challenges affecting population health, including but not limited to climate change, demographic shifts; income inequality; globalisation and migration. We will also examine how social policy across various domains (eg. education, public health, social support, and housing) affect population health, with a focus on socially vulnerable populations and health disparities

This course aims to provide students with an understanding of some of the challenges and solutions to problems faced by developing countries across four key themes: public health, education, finance and financial technologies, and labour markets. The course will draw on recent advances in development economics and focus on new challenges faced by developing countries post-COVID-19. Students will develop a set of empirical tools that can be applied to the analysis of development related policy problems. This course will focus on empirical microeconomic development economics.

This module will provide a fundamental understanding of the root causes of current mismanagement of water at a massive scale, both in terms of quantity and quality, as well as in terms of economic, environmental and health implications. It will explore the direct interrelationships between water and population dynamics, urbanization, ruralisation, globalization, free trade, technological developments, economic growth and other similar issues. The course will assess the impacts and relevance of current global water policy dialogues on issues like poverty alleviation, environment conservation and regional income distribution. Issues like improper and inadequate water quality management in the entire developing world, management of transboundary and interstate rivers and lakes, economic instruments, legal frameworks and institutional arrangements will be considered. The roles of stakeholder participation, public-private partnerships and non-governmental organizations will be explored. 

This module is based on the premise that the sustainability of the natural environment is a necessity for the sustainability of the economic system. Hence the module commences with how specific definitions and models in economics need to be modified in cognizance of certain laws of thermodynamics. The module is divided into four blocks. The first block concerns the introduction of pertinent concepts in economics and their adaptation in the context of the relevant laws of thermodynamics The second and third blocks deal with the application of the adaptations to policy issues respectively at the microeconomic level and the macroeconomic level. The fourth block deals with the synthesis between microeconomic and macroeconomic analyses and the synergy between policies at the different levels 

China’s rise has been the most important economic event of the past 40 years. China has transformed itself from being one of the poorest countries in Asia to becoming the largest economy in the foreseeable future. China reforms transformed the country from a largely planned, agricultural, closed and rural economy to a more market, industrialized, open and urban economy. This course reviews China’s key economic reforms since 1978, examines the sources of China’s economic success, and discusses the challenges and policy issues that have resulted from China’s emergence.

This module provides an overview of the economic theories and concepts most relevant to health and healthcare. It introduces students to the theories of consumer and producer behavior, the interaction of economic agents in competitive markets, and market failures, with a focus on their implications for health policy. Topics include demand for health and health care, health insurance, physician and hospital behavior, pharmaceutical markets, and other related topics. This course seeks to help students develop intuition for thinking about challenges facing health care systems in an economic framework by connecting theories to contemporary health policy issues and empirical work.

This module aims to introduce students to various issues confronting workers, employers, and institutions in the labour market. By familiarizing ourselves with the canonical theories in labour economics and econometrics, we will improve our capacity to understand the modern-day challenges to the labour market, including labor force participation, changing returns to education and job training, technological changes, mobility and migration, productivity and wage, discrimination, signaling in job search, and challenges entailing globalization. We will continue with an analysis of policy interventions implemented to resolve the issues, such as social welfare programs, anti-discrimination laws, immigration reform, minimum wage, and on-the-job training.

This project-based module allows students to develop innovative solutions to real-world policy problems. Students work in teams with external partners (government, corporate, incubators, non-profit organizations, foundations, etc.) to develop a concrete innovative “product" that addresses a specific public policy issue. Students work with their partner on a project. They participate in workshop-style lectures on key issues related to innovation including diffusion, disruption, and policy application, and on practical skills for policy innovation including design thinking, human-centered design, stakeholder analysis, and problem-solving processes. External partners reserve the right to select the student teams working on their proposed projects.

This course looks at pension systems design and public policy issues associated with retirement income provision in Singapore and internationally. It provides students with an understanding of different models of social security systems, the economics and finance of pensions, governments’ role in pension provision, and reform options. Topics covered include: rationale for state involvement; types of pension schemes; plan design and policy choices; Singapore’s Central Provident Fund scheme; fiscal sustainability of pension systems; distributional issues and risk sharing; recent reforms and policy developments; and international comparisons;. A special focus is given to the implications of population ageing on pension policy.

This course examines the concepts and theories pertaining to the introduction and governance of novel technologies in cities. We will explore innovative practices, analyse the environmental, societal, and economic impacts of various technologies and study analytical approaches that can aid us in devising smart policy solutions to utilise them while minimising their risks and unintended consequences. Some of the topics covered are: conceptions of future cities, risk and unintended consequences, design for socio-technical transitions, and governance of risks of novel technologies. We will analytically explore issues around crowdsourcing, sharing economy, 3d printing, ridesharing, autonomous systems, blockchains and automation.

The objective of this course is to train future policy makers to perform gender analysis and to develop gender inclusive public policy in the context of international development. This course covers theoretical, methodological as well as practical aspects of gender analysis in various sectors of the economy and discusses how public policy and programmes can be designed to bridge gender inequality. The course puts a specific emphasis on methodological issues including the available qualitative and quantitative instruments to measure empowerment and gender disparity.

The module brings students up to date on the state of the field of international trade – both theory and empirics, without relying on overly technical models. The first part provides an overall understanding of international trade theory – comparative advantage, gains and losses, scale and scope, exporting vs non-exporting firms, offshoring and outsourcing; the second part resolves some common misconceptions about trade often seen in the media, and highlights key lessons from the latest empirical research; the third part focuses exclusively on trade policy in Asia, with episodes from Japan, China, India, South Korea, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and others.

This course introduces game theoretic tools to examine strategic behavior and its consequences for a wide range of economic, political, and social applications. We develop important techniques to better navigate strategic interactions from decision-making under risk and uncertainty, collective decision-making, agenda setting and strategic voting, negotiating and bargaining, the value of common knowledge, information disclosure with signaling and screening, participating in auctions, and designing strategyproof mechanisms in practice. We also highlight the limitations of rationality in practice and develop strategic analysis and institutional design techniques in light of individual/collective decision-making given such empirical (ir-)regularities from behavioral economics.

This course aims to broaden one's perspective on markets and marketplaces. We learn how to design markets, institutions, and organizations in practice, and analyse their allocative properties, induced incentives, and limitations, to help formulate regulatory policy. The course underscores practical takeaways in designing a wide range of markets, e.g., auctions for procurement and spectrum allocation, matching markets to assign students to schools, doctors to hospitals, and resettle refugees, centralised versus decentralised labor markets for civil servants, online market platforms, natural monopolies for electricity, and incentive schemes promoting pharmaceutical R&D. We cover issues like fairness, efficiency, simplicity, transparency, externalities, and collusion.

This module provides a survey of energy transition and green transformation in Asia and related policy challenges from a global perspective. The module concentrates on three topics: (i) Energy sustainability challenges and the green transformation imperative; (ii) Efforts of Asian countries in renewable energy development; and (iii) International best practices in promoting green transformation and policy lessons for Asia/ASEAN countries.

This course takes an applied economics approach to strategic management for public policy. We introduce foundational toolsets from network theory, behavioral economics, matching theory, contract and incentive theory for designing effective institutions, efficient organizations, and robust policy implementation. Applied econometric methods will be used for data-driven policy evaluation: randomized control trials, regression discontinuity designs, survey designs, and difference-in-difference methods. We cover case studies across wide-ranging policy domains to understand why certain policies and organizations worked/failed and why. We discuss issues like leveraging behavioral economics in policy implementation, networks for optimal information dissemination, implementation of affirmative action, personnel economics, corruption, etc.

The course will explore the features, applications, benefits and risks of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Digital Currencies, Cloud, 5G, IoT, 3D Printing and Robots on social policy (education, healthcare, insurance, social safety nets), employment and wages, fiscal policy (taxation and expenditure), transport and smart cities and implications for politics and social cohesion (fake news, deep fake, election manipulation). It will explore policies and regulatory implications in terms of growth, equity, security, privacy, efficiency and risk management for Singapore. The course will be comparative in perspective and will draw from the experience of the US, China, Europe, Japan and Singapore.

This course aims to equip students with the concepts and analytical tools for designing policy to promote economic growth and sustainable prosperity in digital age. The course concentrate on five main areas: (i)Economic development strategy; (ii)Economic growth and productivity analysis; (iii) Globalization and economic growth; (iv) Digital transformation and (v)The energy revolution and sustainable development.

This course will provide students with an overview of how the environment affects health outcomes and health behaviors. Students will examine how policies that influence the various dimensions of the environment can affect population health, even if these policies do not directly target health as an outcome. For example, building a new expressway might have unanticipated negative effects on residents nearby due to the noise generated both by construction and car-traffic. Through this course, students will gain insights on how to integrate public health considerations into policy-making and planning, and help achieve better health and health equity in urban environments.

Increasing longevity and declining fertility rates have shifted the age distribution of populations around the globe. Economics of Ageing as a field has become increasingly important as many countries are facing rapid population ageing. This course will examine the economic challenges and opportunities associated with an ageing population eg. how the demographic shift affects labor supply and productivity, retirement saving and wealth, intergenerational transfers, social security and pension design, healthcare financing, long-term care. Students will gain an understanding of how demographic changes shape the economy, as well as policy responses to address the challenges of an ageing population.

The course examines why and how governments intervene in the development of urban areas. Students will review debates about a ‘good city’ should be and examine models of a ‘good city’ which have inspired planners past and present. We will examine the goals and urban interventions typically implemented as part of each model; as well as critiques. Students will be equipped with knowledge and skills to critically assess typical urban policies, plans and projects that contribute positively or otherwise to the many facets of a ‘good city’.

This is a course on intermediate macroeconomics that introduces students to important concepts and analytical tools frequently used by economists to tackle a range of macroeconomic issues that are relevant to businesses, governments and households. It examines issues relating to long-term growth as well as business cycles. Significant attention is paid to macroeconomic stabilisation (fiscal and monetary policy). The course also introduces some basic open macro economy issues such as balance of payments, exchange rates and currency crises. The aim will be to provide coherent analytical frameworks and theoretical foundations to understanding contemporary global macroeconomic policy challenges.

Empirical evidence is key to sound public policy formulation, monitoring, and evaluation. Official statistics, as trusted, organized information, have served this purpose for centuries; their production is institutionalized and governed by internationally-agreed ethics and practices. Unstructured information, including Big Data and Geoinformation, has emerged recently, offering public policy new empirical basis for making decisions. This has been described as ‘Data Revolution’ by international organizations. This course is designed for practitioners in the field of public policy to gain an in depth understanding of the design and intricacies of structured information (official statistics) and unstructured information such as Big Data and Geoinformation.

Data analytics is a scientific approach to help organisations solve problems, make better decisions, and increase productivity. Despite its business origins, analytics has been applied in governments, hospitals, and even museums, spurning a $125 billion market. However, a significant number of analytics projects fail due, in part, to poor science (techniques), art (e.g., implementation, change management) or both. This module covers the critical success factors for organisations embarking on their analytics journeys with topics spanning: project scoping, psychometrics, statistical modelling, text analytics, and applications in government, people, and healthcare analytics.

This project-based module allows students to develop innovative solutions to real-world policy problems. Students work in teams with external partners (government, corporate, incubators, non-profit organizations, foundations, etc.) to develop a concrete innovative “product" that addresses a specific public policy issue. Students work with their partner on a project. They participate in workshop-style lectures on key issues related to innovation including diffusion, disruption, and policy application, and on practical skills for policy innovation including design thinking, human-centered design, stakeholder analysis, and problem-solving processes. External partners reserve the right to select the student teams working on their proposed projects.

This module covers the major topics of social survey research. It focuses on questionnaire design but also covers topics like sampling, survey modes, interpreting survey data, using survey evidence in decision- making, and research ethics. The course is practical: students will not only learn about questionnaire theory and survey methodology, but they will also use that knowledge in developing their own questionnaires. While focusing on public opinion and internet-based social science survey research, the skills covered in this course will also be applicable for market and organisational research, policymaker surveys, and more.

In this graduate course on prediction and forecasting, students will learn how to design, refine, and evaluate various models for prediction and forecasting using cross-sectional and time-series data. The emphasis will be on practical applications of forecasting concepts using Stata. Students will see applications in economics, budgeting, finance, and other quantitative fields.