Fees and funding

Fees

For entry in the academic year beginning September 2027, the tuition fees are as follows:

  • MA (full-time)
    UK students (per annum): £16,600
    International, including EU, students (per annum): £35,300

The fees quoted above are fully inclusive of tuition, administration and computational costs.

Fees for entry are subject to yearly review. The University reserves the right to increase your tuition fee by up to 7% each year for courses lasting more than one year, including to reflect rising costs associated with delivering our educational and wider student experience. Postgraduate fees information .

Always contact the admissions team if you are unsure which fee applies to your qualification award and method of attendance.

Policy on additional costs

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

Scholarships/sponsorships

We know that student finance can be complicated. The links below provide further information to help guide you.

Course unit details:
Political Economics

Course unit fact file
Unit code ECON60492
Credit rating 15
Unit level FHEQ level 7 – master's degree or fourth year of an integrated master's degree
Teaching period(s) Semester 2
Offered by Economics
Available as a free choice unit? Yes

Aims

The purpose of this course is to study some key concepts and models in the literature on political economics, with a focus on redistribution and the electoral process of democratic countries

 

Learning outcomes

At the end of this course, students should be able to demonstrate:

  • Knowledge and understanding of the main tools used to formally represent political economics problems; and how and when to apply the various existing models, as well as the main limitations of them.
  • Intellectual skills to critically assess theoretical arguments, and to interpret, organize and understand real world problems involving economics and politics.
  • Practical skills to derive theoretical results and to present them to small audiences.
  • Transferable skills and personal qualities to express political¿economic concepts, reasoning, and intuitions to non-specialized audiences.

 

Syllabus

Provisional

1. Electoral Competition: candidate location; policy commitment; electoral uncertainty; political motivations; power; ideology; policy differentiation (convergence); median voter result; political instability.

Recommended Reading

¿ Drouvelis, M., Saporiti, A., Vriend, N., Political Motivations and Electoral Competition:

Equilibrium Analysis and Experimental Evidence, Games and Economic Behavior, Vol. 83

(2014), pp. 86–115.

¿ Gehlbach, S., Formal Models of Domestic Politics, Cambridge University Press (2013).

Chapters 1-2.

2. Programmatic Redistribution: income taxation; indirect preferences over policies; political equilibrium; redistribution; inequality gap (median vs mean); median voter; social preferences; inequality aversion.

Recommended Reading

¿ Meltzer, A., Richards, S., A rational theory of the size of government, Journal of Political Economy 89 (5), (1981), pp. 914-927.

Teaching and learning methods

Lecture and Tutorial

Assessment methods

Method Weight
Written exam 100%

Recommended reading

Acemoglu, D. Egorov, G., Sonin, K., A Political Theory of Populism, Quarterly Journal of

Economics, (2013), pp. 771–805.

 

 

Study hours

Scheduled activity hours
Lectures 20
Tutorials 5
Independent study hours
Independent study 125

Teaching staff

Staff member Role
Alejamdro Saporiti Unit coordinator

Additional notes

Timetable

Lecture: Monday 3pm-5pm,

Tutorial: Monday 5pm-6pm,

 

Return to course details

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