A selected list of courses being offered at SPP in the coming semester for students wishing to register. The list below may be updated so please keep checking.
Instructor - Prof Kaveri Iychettira
3-0-0
Complex adaptive systems are hidden in plain sight — examples include cities, economies, biological cells, ecosystems, and the internet, amongst others. In such systems, the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. The scientific community has only recently begun discovering the fundamental properties of these systems; properties such as randomness, self-organisation, non-linearity, and emergence. No longer constrained by traditional tools, recent advances in computational techniques such as agent-based modelling have been helping scientists better explore, understand, and predict behaviours within such systems.
In this course, the students will apply complex-adaptive-systems thinking along with agent-based modelling, to address real-world policy problems across diverse domains of interest, such as energy, public health, agriculture, internet or others. On successful completion of the course, the students will be able to: describe and identify complexity across domains; define and explain complex adaptive systems (CAS); identify real-life examples of complex adaptive systems; define agent based modelling; choose a policy design problem; conceptualize a socio-technical system as a complex adaptive system; build an agent-based model; analyze a policy problem of your choice using the agent-based model; verify and validate your model, and communicate your findings.
For further introductions to the topic, check out these introductory videos prepared by thought-leaders in the field: Complex Adaptive Systems introduction video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS0zj_dYeBE
SPL 712 - Comparative Industrial Policy
Instructor - Prof Rohit Chandra
3-0-0 (AA slot)
This course is aimed at students who are interested in learning about why and how different industries grow as part of broader economic development. Using examples and theories from both India and abroad, this course will introduce students to the last half-century of of industrial growth around the world, and the successes and failures of industrial promotion. Throughout this course we will discuss the role of states versus markets, some of the determinants of regional heterogeneity in growth experiences, primary vs. secondary vs. tertiary sector growth and the various theories that have emerged from the last century of industrial progress in the developed and developing world. Trade and autarky (self-reliance) will also be an important topic of discussion. This course will be strongly interdisciplinary, including readings from economics, political science, sociology and history.
SPL 708 - Statistics for Public Policy
Instructor - Prof Nandana Sengupta
3-0-0 (AD slot)
On successful completion of this course, the student will become proficient in the essential statistical methods and concepts commonly used in public policy analysis. This course will begin with elementary topics such as the difference between population and sample, parameters and estimates and sampling distributions. This will be followed by statistical hypothesis tests with a particular focus on comparison of means testing which is particularly relevant for evidence based policy evaluation. Next, the course will cover the linear regression, its estimation and inference under standard assumptions followed by estimation when the standard assumptions fail to hold. Finally, some advanced topics will be covered including regression with categorical variables, basics of panel data and time series models and a discussion on correlation vs causality. The objective of the course is for students to get hands-on experience with analyzing data for empirical public policy. Accordingly, the emphasis of the course will be on empirical applications from the public policy domain.