Economics: VU University Amsterdam

Course Description

The Master’s in Economics is a high-quality one-year programme which has been developed for the prospective professional economist with an interest in social issues. It teaches you the essentials of modern economic theory and how to apply them to everyday problems. Using behavioural models and statistical techniques, economics seeks answers to macroeconomic and microeconomic issues such as poverty, social insecurity, inflation and traffic congestion.

You will learn how to apply the economic techniques learned at Bachelor’s level, in a structured way, to practical problems. As a Master’s student, you will learn to conduct your own research, subjecting existing theories to critical tests.

Core courses provide the fundamentals: Advanced Methods for Applied Economic Research, Microeconomics for Policy and Advanced Macroeconomics. Elective courses can be freely picked and mixed from the set of their "specialization courses", and on request, one out of the three electives can be chosen from outside this set.

Certain fixed combinations of specialization courses allow opting for having a "specialization" shown on the diploma supplement. There are four areas of specialization:

• Development Economics
• Economic and Social Policy
• International and Macroeconomic Policy
• Spatial Economics

Admission requirements

• Direct admission to the Master's programme in Economics is only possible with a Bachelor's degree in economics and business administration or econometrics from VU University Amsterdam. In these cases, students must have successfully completed the following 3rd year bachelor courses: Research Methods for Economics and Finance, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, and a tutorial Micro- or Macroeconomics.
• Applicants with a Bachelor's degree in Economics (or very closely related) from an accredited university must have a sufficient knowledge in both Micro- and Macroeconomics and a solid background in mathematics and statistics for economists.
• Other applicants, already studying in the Netherlands or with a Dutch HBO degree, not meeting these criteria may be required to successfully complete additional preparatory courses, possibly in Dutch (e.g., pre-master), before they can be admitted to the program, which may substantially increase the total expected time to completion.