Sustainable Business Practices and Development Economics

Catalog description

The course is structured to provide students with a series of coherent modules. The first module introduces concepts in sustainable development economics and complexity theory. The main idea is to incorporate novel ideas into more traditional growth theories. We use a broader perspective on development, using concepts from complexity theory and other disciplines to provide a solid theoretical framework. Students are expected to tackle sophisticated theoretical papers in this module. The second module explores the role of companies in promoting sustainable ideas by transforming the socioeconomical environment, analyzing the possibility that private firms can be promoters of change by changing internal management practices. We use a Business as Usual to a Future Sustainable Business framework as sketched below and explore the role of firms in changing the international business context - one of the case studies for this module explores changes in a multinational bank that introduced a credit score system based on sustainability of the agricultural sector. Prereq for ECON-SHU 151 is ECON-SHU 1 Principles of Macroeconomics or ECON-SHU 3 Microeconomics. Fulfillment: Economics elective.