Courses that I’ve lectured over the past few years are listed below, along with their synopsis. 
 

Real Options

Policy/Decision makers need advice on what actions to take or how to value infrastructure systems. This advice is particularly relevant when it pertains to strategic and tactical decisions. Before we can advise policy makers on what to do, we need to specify an objective function to be optimized. This task is nontrivial, because there is potential for disagreement among policy/decision makers, due to differences in their risk attitudes, time preferences, wealth, and labor income. The standard net present value rule used by static discounted cash flow analysis is consistent with this objective function only in very special circumstances: The selection of now or never projects are characterized by a deterministic stream of future cash flows. That is, this approach ignores the ability of managers to use all the available information when deciding on the timing to undertake a project and when managing a project.

In contrast to the static discounted cash flow analysis, real options analysis is an approach to managerial decision making that always assumes that managers maximize the market value of projects and they use all the available information when making decisions, in particular when managing projects that involve dynamic and state contingent choices among alternatives (options), such as, expanding/reducing capacity, investing in new technology, suspending production, and mothballing a plant. The resulting valuation can thus be very different when real options analysis is used rather than static discounted cash flow analysis.  

The partial spanning and price taking assumptions of the real options approach are also the basis of the Black‐Scholes‐Merton approach to the valuation of financial options. The real options approach thus extends this fundamental market driven valuation approach to a much broader spectrum of managerial decision making concerns.

The course provides with a set of essential tools for applying real options analysis. In particular, the course presents the key components of a real options model: Exogenous state variables whose values evolve independently of the policy/decision makers actions, the process that governs the future behavior of the values of these state variables, the actions that a policy/decision makers can take, the endogenous state variables whose values evolve according to these actions, and the cash flows that depend on the current state variable values and the current policy/decision makers actions.
 

Decentralized Development Planning and Policy Reform in Emerging Economies (Yet to be taught)

This course presents an overview of the evolution of the theory and practice of planning in emerging economies with a particular focus on state/sub national governments. A central theme is that there are certain universal norms and processes in development planning, but the structure and performance of a planning system depend heavily on the economic, political and institutional context of a particular country. The course outlines and assesses planning models and systems, reviews approaches used by emerging economies and international development agencies to support decentralization and local planning, and introduces a range of practices and tools used by planners in emerging economies. The overall focus is on how processes, planning systems and methodologies can be strategically designed and implemented to work effectively in different contexts. Detailed case studies and exercises based on them are an integral part of the course.

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Urban Planning

This course examines the concepts and techniques of urban analysis, plan making and implementation essential for effective interdisciplinary work in sustainable urban planning. Further the course will explore ways to resolve the global, regional and local issues of unsustainable development priorities by better understanding how and where we chose to live. Sustainable urban planning is about creating active neighborhoods, mixed land use, transportation networks and the right infrastructure that can foster functional and vibrant communities. By end of the course, students will also be able to identify strategies that is required for integrating healthy policy goals into planning processes.

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Design Methods 

This course presents useful tools for decision makers for the design of complex engineering systems (e.g. infrastructure and energy systems). Some of the specific objectives the students should be able to (i) search for ways in which a design can fail, and assess likelihood of failure. (ii) evaluate competing design concepts systematically. (iii) appreciate how decisions regarding complex engineering systems influence performance.

 

Research Methods 

This course introduces the basic ideas behind the qualitative research in social sciences. The students will learn about the foundations of a wide variety of qualitative techniques including case study methods, process tracing, semi structured interviewing, document analysis, historiography and combining qualitative and quantitative data. In addition methodological considerations such as how qualitative and quantitative research contributes to policy design, implementation and evaluation and limitations associated with qualitative and quantitative research will be examined. The course will employ lectures, small group presentations, independent analysis, audio visual aids and critical analysis of existing research studies. 

 

Upscaling for Development Impact (In preparation)

This course will focus on the experience of upscaling in different institutional settings. Upscaling is key to improve development effectiveness all over the globe yet it is difficult to achieve. This is an imperative issue for government, the private sector, non profit sectors and the donor community. And each of these organizations has different ways to go about it. An analytic framework for understanding upscaling and the reasons why this is significant will be discussed. Specific cases of upscaling by the government, private organizations and international agencies will be discussed. Various conclusions will be drawn from these examples and what they mean for public service delivery and development effectiveness. Students will be asked to choose a upscaling challenge and work on it throughout the course, applying the lessons from the different cases which are presented.

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Behavioral Economics 

The course will aim to provide students with a focus on behavioral implications of theoretical models and on experimental evidence in behavioral economics. More specifically, this course will focus on bounded rationality, decision making under risk and uncertainty, inter-temporal decision making, heuristics, behavioral emotions and libertarian paternalism. Furthermore, this course will consider how behavioral cognitive models could assist policy makers and researchers to address complex real world problems. This course will be based on scholarly behavioral economics books, peer-reviewed journal publications and lecture notes (slides).