Study programme

Tentative overview of the different sessions:

Part I, focusing on financial globalization and the poor, conceptualizes, defines and measures financial globalization, discusses and critically assesses the International Monetary and Financial Architecture, reappraises the relation between financial globalization and development in a general comprehensive framework, and discusses different types of (international) financial crises (banking, currency and debt crises). It then assesses the impact of financial globalization on development and the poor, and discusses what strategies and policy interventions are introduced at different levels in order to make financial globalization a positive force for development and poverty reduction, and how recipient countries (in the Global South) can try to navigate this process. We not only look at the global and the macro (recipient country) level, but also look at micro-(local)level interventions.

1a: Concepts of Financial Globalization: 

▪          Session 1: Introduction: a global public goods approach to global finance.

▪          Session 2: Measuring financial globalization and its decomposition. 

▪          Session 3: Explaining the levels and (causal) effects of financial globalization on economic growth, crisis and development: an integrated framework.

▪          Session 4-5: Types of (international) financial crisis: banking, currency and debt.  

1b:  Optimizing the Impact of Financial Globalization on Development and the Poor: 

▪          Session 6: Lessons learned from recent international financial crises. 

▪          Session 7: Designing policy interventions at the global–level: the international financial and development architecture and innovative finance. 

▪          Session 8: Designing policy interventions at the macro (recipient country) level. 

▪          Session 9: Designing policy interventions at the micro (local) level. 

Part II: Aid and (global) public goods: a political economy perspective, introduces the students into the history and politics of aid, including how to look up and interpret aid statistics; it also describes the evolving global aid architecture. Subsequently, it discusses the extensive literature on whether and how aid is good for  development. In doing so it discusses the macro-economic and fiscal effects of aid on recipient countries, and the effects of different aid delivery modalities, aid heterogeneity and aid volatility. Moreover, students get acquainted with theories on (global) public goods, and aid as an instrument for financing these global public goods. Attention is also given to more recent, ‘innovative’ (global) funding instruments, as a lot of these more innovative instruments aim at crowding -in more private sources of finance for explicit development purposes. Finally, the course dives into the latest debates on the implications of recent crises such as the pandemic for aid. 

▪        Sessions 1-8: History and politics of aid including aid statistics; the evolving global development aid acchitecture.

▪        Sessions 9-16: assessing the literature on whether aid is good for growth and development, macro-economic and fiscal effects of aid, heterogeneity of aid, aid volatility, funding Global Public Goods and ‘innovative (global) funding instruments, crowding in private finance through aid, the implications of the recent crises (pandemic, Ukraine war) for aid.

Upon successful completion of the micro credential 7 ECTS are accredited.