Students pursuing Option II will in general have a stronger exposure to questions of development and sustainability which, as put forth in the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda comprising seventeen Sustainable Development Goals, cover a wide range of socio-economic issues – the environment, poverty eradication, greater income equality, health, education, etc. – crucially determinant of the quality of life on this planet and having each deservedly been elevated to a matter of policy priority. These facets of sustainable development need to be broadly contextualized to explore them as issues of policy-making and highlight their interdependencies. In EPOG 2.0, we have tried to give students different options how to approach and formulate that context as future policy-makers engaged to shape the evolution of capitalist economies.

Students have three options. Those pursuing Option II.A combine the international-macroeconomic-development focus provided by first-semester courses in Berlin (at the Berlin School of Economics and Law) with a second semester at the top-rated University of Witwatersrand (“Wits”) in South Africa for a deeper look at economic development, both within a macro context and at the same time related to specific (industrial and trade) policies explored from a micro-level point of view of individual firms or specific sectors. Wits’ macro-micro focus on economic development also serves those pursuing Option II.B where this orientation merges with issues of sustainable development as presented in both an interdisciplinary and quantitatively-oriented fashion at Roma Tre. If students in Option II prefer instead to stick with the dual focus on sustainable development, they can spend the entire first year at Roma Tre pursuing Option II.C.