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ECON4921 - Institutions and Economic Systems

Course content

The lectures are built around the question: How do different institutions and organizations work?

Topics:

• Institutions and Economic Performance
• The Firm
• Organized Interest and Ownership
• Complementarity of Institutions
• Institutions and Commitment
• Bureaucracy
• Fiscal Federalism
• System Competition

Learning outcomes

Knowledge outcomes
The course introduces students to theories for how various institutional arrangements work, with an emphasis on economic and political institutions. The course also deals with questions like: Why do particular institutions come into existence? How may certain institutions complement each other? How are economic systems affected by competitive forces?

Skills
The students should be able to use economic models to explain how various institutional arrangements work and be able to discuss the assumptions, relevance, and limitations of these models. Students are also expected to become familiar with recent empirical work that aims at evaluating and quantifying the mechanisms of the models we study, and to discuss these contributions critically.

Admission

The subject is open for both Norwegian and international students.

Students who are admitted to study programmes at UiO must each semester register which courses and exams they wish to sign up for in StudentWeb.

Students enrolled in other Master's Degree Programmes can, on application, be admitted to the course if this is cleared by their own study programme.

International applicants, if you are not already enrolled as a student at UiO, please see our information about admission requirements and procedures for international applicants.

Prerequisites

Formal prerequisites

Bachelor's degree in Economics, or equivalent.

Overlap

10 credits against ECON4920 - Economic systems, institutions and globalisation. 10 credits against ECON485 Økonomiske systemer. 10 credits against SØK485 Økonomiske systemer, 3. avd. samfunnsøkonomi. 10 credits against SOØ485 Økonomiske systemer, 3. avd. sosialøkonomi.

Teaching

Lectures: 2 hours per week throughout the semester. Seminars: 2 hours per week through parts of the semester.

Students are stimulated to form informal reading groups. In the seminars the students are trained in oral and written presentations. The seminars are integrated with the lectures and the students will take part, individually and on a group basis, also in the lectures.

The students will throughout the term receive written and oral feedback.

Exam information

A 3-hour written exam.

Exam resources

No special exam resources are allowed.

Language of examination

The problem set will be given in English. Answers can be given in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish or in English. See § 6.4 i Forskrift om studier og eksamener ved Universitetet i Oslo .

Assessment and grading

Course grades are awarded on a descending scale using alphabetic grades from A to E for passes and F for fail. Read more about the grading system .

Possibility of make-up exams and re-takes

The Department of Economics has passed following resolution for ECON-courses: It will no longer be possible for candidates to register for an exam in a lower level course after having passed exams in intermediate and advanced level courses in the same subject area (also where there are no pre-requisites that apply to the intermediate course). Further information can be found here.

Students who might wish to retake the exam later, are not guaranteed that the course is ever repeated with a similar reading list, nor that the exam arrangement will be the same.

Evaluation of this course

Feedback from our students is essential to us in our efforts to ensure and further improve the high quality of our programmes and courses. As a student at the University of Oslo you will therefore be asked to participate in various types of evaluation of our courses, facilities and services. All courses are subject to continuous evaluation. At regular intervals we also ask students on a particular course to participate in a more comprehensive, in-depth evaluation of this course, a so called "periodic evaluation".

A periodic evaluation of ECON4921 - Institutions and Economic Systems was conducted during autum term 2009. A Norwegian version of the evaluation report that was compiled on the basis of the information retrieved from the evaluation, can be found here

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