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COURSE OPTIONS

There are a very wide range of courses available to students with interests in the economic development area. They can be roughly sub-divided into three categories: policy, practice and substantive issues; theory; and methods. Note that some courses are suitable only for doctoral students or master's students with advanced training. You should check each course's pre-requisites carefully before attempting to enroll. Also, some courses are offered only on an occasional basis.

Disclaimer: This page is not updated on a continuous basis. It attempts to be reasonably comprehensive in terms of the most relevant courses on campus, but it may miss a few. Be sure to scan the offerings at individual department websites (particularly planning, geography, economics, and agricultural and consumer economics) and check the UIUC course timetable.

POLICY, PRACTICE & SUBSTANTIVE ISSUES

Business Location Decisionmaking (GEOG 205)
Analysis of location decision-making with emphasis on industrial and commercial location patterns. Identification of important institutional factors and their changing roles over the recent past. Focuses on plant closing, economic disruptions, problems of structural change, role of multinationals and the policy responses by the public sector. Hewings, fall.

State and Local Government Finance (UP 407)
Provides an understanding of the concepts of fiscal planning at the state and local levels of government. Addresses the theory and methods of state and local finance, as well as state and local fiscal policy (including some discussion of federal policy). Addresses the following issues beyond the general concepts of taxation, spending, intergovernmental cooperation, debt financing, development fees, exactions and privatization: how local tax and spending decisions affect land use; equity and efficiency implications of recent proposals to reform state and federal tax policy; the kinds of goals that can be achieved through a comprehensive state and local revenue generating policy; the impacts of local government services privatization; the use of tax policy to provide incentives to preserve farmland and open space; and financial tools available to spur local economic development. Edwards, Fall.

Urban Real Estate Valuation (FIN 444)
The terminology, theory and techniques of real estate valuation (appraisal); a modern view of the tree approaches to estimating values—sales comparison, cost, and income. Special requirements include local field trips to appraise at least one single-family property and one income property.

Real Estate Investment (FIN 445)
Approach to the evaluation of real estate investment opportunities. Begins with the identification of the investor’s goals and ends with an investment decision. Considers legal, physical, locational, and financial constraint, aggregate real estate and financial markets, tax considerations, and investment criteria.

Economic Development Planning (UP 445)
Introduction to the concepts, ideas, and strategies employed in the pursuit of economic development; clarification of distinctions and similarities between related perspectives; development of basic principles for critically assessing alternative development policies and programs; reflection on the goals and objectives of economic development efforts; examination of the context in which development policy making occurs. Pre-requisites: Equivalent of UP 505 and intermediate microeconomics. Feser, Fall.

Small Business Consulting (BADM 445)
Through guided experience, students identify and offer advice to local small business firms; exposes students, serving as consultants, to the wide variety of problems facing the smaller firms as well as enables them to apply current business methods to real problems. Students work in teams. Pre-requisites: Junior standing in the College of Business or admission to the Masters of Business Administration program; or consent of instructor.

Housing and Urban Policy Planning (UP 473)
The role of housing in American social policy planning. Economic modeling of the housing market, emphasizing supply and demand functions and private market imperfections; and analysis of public policies for housing as they affect special consumer groups (the poor, the elderly, and the minorities). Bates, Spring.

Neighborhood Planning (UP 474)
Overview: Examines rationale and techniques for planning at the neighborhood level; the major social, political, and economic issues that confound public and private sector effects to revitalize distressed neighborhoods. Harwood, Fall.

Community Development Workshop (UP 478)
Application of community development principles and techniques to the solution of environmental, economic and social problems facing low income urban communities. Participants collaborate with neighborhood leaders to produce stabilization plans promoting business development, job generation, housing improvement and municipal service delivery. Involves small group projects and off-campus field work. Pre-requisites: Undergraduates must have UP 347 or the consent of the instructor. Harwood, Spring.

Agriculture in International Development (ACE 451)
The economics of agricultural development and the relationships between agriculture and other sectors of the economy in developing nations; agricultural productivity and levels of living in the less developed areas of the world; and studies of agricultural development in different world regions including Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Economic Development in South and Southeast Asia (ACE 453)
Analysis of plans and progress toward economic development in South and Southeast Asia; economic characteristics of the area and their significance for economic development.

Economic Development of Tropical Africa (ACE 454)
Types of African economies and growth of the exchange economy; development of natural resources, industry, trade, finance, and education; analysis of economic integration, governmental planning, and development projects; and demographic, land tenure, and institutional influences on development.

Economic Development Workshop (UP 494CR)
Students participate in discussions about public policy application and development, covering topics such as tax increment financing, economic incentives and project finance; and work as a team in a field work setting to apply theory, principles, and techniques to specific economic development problems and projects in local government. Rost, Fall.

THEORY

Urban Economics (ECON 414)
Covers the economic reasons for the existence of cities, the theory of urban spatial structure, the effects of taxation on housing decisions, the economics of freeway congestion, economic analysis of local public goods and services, economic analysis of rent control, slum policies and land-use controls.

International Economics (ECON 420)
Introduction to the theory of international trade and finance with selected application to current problems of trade policy, balance of payments adjustment, the international monetary system, and globalization issues. 3 undergraduate hours. 2 or 4 graduate hours.

Rural Real Estate Appraisal (ACE 448)
Valuation methods and value bases of rural real estate; legal aspects of property rights, appraisal theory and procedures, condemnation appraisal, characteristics of the rural land market, soil identification and productivity, and other legal, economic, agronomic, and engineering aspects of real estate valuation. Laboratory field trips, including a practice appraisal.

Advanced Natural Resource Economics (ACE 510)
Emphasizes the role of public policy in natural resource use: theory of allocating renewable and nonrenewable natural resources over time; effects of institutions on resource use; causes and consequences of technological change; natural resources and economic growth; and applications of concepts to current natural resource issues.

Environmental Economics (ACE 516)
Examines both theory and policy applications in the environmental area; selectively reviews the literature to provide a framework for understanding the relevant economic relationships and the criteria appropriate for policy assessment; emphasizes the characteristics of major environmental problems and policy choices; and considers the valuation of environmental amenities and the conflict between environmental quality and growth.

Public Goods Theory (ECON 511)
In-depth analysis of the theory of public goods; includes public goods and externality theory, public choice, theory of cost-benefit analysis, optimal income redistribution, and fiscal federalism.

Economics of Taxation (ECON 512)
Theoretical and empirical analysis of the impact of taxation on the economic system; topics include tax equity and excess burden, incentive effects of taxation, tax incidence, structure of major types of taxes (income, consumption, and wealth), normative tax analysis, and taxation in developing economies.

Real Estate Economics (FIN 541)
Discusses the theory and practice of real estate and urban land economics; emphasizes real estate market analysis, finance, appraisal, and investment.

Advanced Regional Economics (ACE 592)
Focuses on current research in regional economics published in the leading economics journals. Meets as a seminar to discuss seminal articles and recent extensions. Students serve as discussion leaders for one or two articles a week and participate actively in the discussion of all the week’s articles. Discussions build an understanding of the articles’ contributions, its research design, and shortcomings. The first weeks of the course cover survey articles of regional economics and classic articles from the 1950s to build a common vocabulary and background for the analysis of contemporary regional economics. Prerequisites: ECON 500 General Microeconomic Theory and a course in econometrics. Isserman, Fall.

Economics and Leisure (RST 594LE)
The economic foundations of leisure behavior (demand and supply for leisure goods and services); market and non-market valuation (and economic impact) of leisure, recreation and sport; and special topics, including tipping, ticket pricing and scalping, the economics of wine and art, the economic design of sporting contests and sports leagues, and the economic benefits of athletic participation and popular music. Humphreys, Fall.

METHODS

Environment and Development (ACE 411)
Application of theory and methods of cost-benefit analysis and environmental economics to appraisal of development projects and economic programs. Topics include willingness to pay, willingness to accept, project appraisal, social benefit-cost analysis, dynamic models, ecological economics and non-market valuation.

GIS for Planners (UP 418)
Detailed introduction to the design and use of computerized geographic information systems, focusing on their significance for planning. Emphasizes GIS within an institutional setting, covering not only fundamental technical concepts, but also organizational, management, and legal issues. Students will be introduced to GIS applications and products through readings, videos, demonstrations, and exercises. Computer laboratory work is included. Prerequisites: Upper division undergaraduate or graduate standing. Nedović-Budić, Fall.

Planning Frameworks and Methods: Analysis (UP 505)
Frameworks and methods for analyzing cities and regions as economic, social and ecological systems in order to understand how they work and to imagine scenarios of change that include plans and actions within these systems. This is a core requirement for the MUP degree. Also useful for students interested in learning basic urban and regional analysis methods as a pre-requisite to courses such as UP 585.

Advanced Applications of GIS (UP 519)
Advanced course in geographic information systems emphasizing application of GIS to problems involving spatial analysis. Building upon fundamental concepts, students learn to use GIS software frequently found in planning practice. Also prepares students to use GIS in research requiring management and analysis of geographic data. Extensive use of computing workstations. Prerequisites: UP 418 or consent of instructor. Spring, Kim.

Regional Science Methods: Economic and Demographic (UP 556)
Examination of models of regional growth and development, including export base, input-output and econometric, cohort component and spatial interaction; emphasizes socioeconomic impact analysis and forecasting subnational economic and demographic change. Hewings, fall.

Seminar in Regional Science (UP 557)
Discusses advanced topics in regional science; prepares students for dissertation and thesis research, applied study for public agency, or other student research. Hewings, fall.

Optimization Methods (ACE 563)
Application of mathematical programming methods to discrete models in agricultural economics; Kuhn-Tucker theorem, Lagrange multipliers, duality, simplex method as applied to linear and quadratic programming, and input-output analysis models in agriculture.

Modeling Dynamic Economic Systems (ACE 565)
Course introduces computer simulation modeling as a tool for studying the behavior of dynamic economic systems. Particular emphasis is given to applications of the dynamic simulation approach to problems in resource economics and management. STELLA, a computer simulation software, is used in the course.

Advanced Formal Modeling in Planning (UP 585)
Seminar on formal models used to analyze planning problems and planning behavior. Includes static and dynamic, linear and non-linear, and deterministic and stochastic optimization models. Derivations of models and methods for solution treated in depth, but the emphasis is on applications to planning problems such as transportation, land use, and environmental management. Specific themes change from year to year. Donaghy, Spring.

Spatial Analysis (ACE 592-SA)
Spatial analysis encompasses a collection of techniques to add value to data contained in geographic information systems. As such, spatial analysis forms an important component of the evolving discipline of Geographic Information Science. This course reviews a range of spatial analytical techniques and their implementation in state of the art GIS software. The focus is on spatial data analysis, including the analysis of spatial point patterns, autocorrelation and principles of geostatistics. An important aspect of the course is to gain hands-on experience in applying these techniques with GIS and spatial analytical software. Anselin, Spring.

Spatial Econometrics (ACE 592-SE)
How to deal with problems of spatial dependence and spatial heterogeneity encountered in cross-sectional (and panel) data sets. The use of spatial econometric techniques is increasingly common in empirical work in economics, not only in regional and urban economics (including real estate analysis), but also in resource and environmental economics, public economics and international economics, among others. The main objective of this course is to provide an exposure to state of the art methods in applied econometrics that can be effectively incorporated into empirical research. While the main focus of the course is on spatial aspects, the types of methods covered have general validity in econometric practice. The course includes topics such as the specification of dependent stochastic processes, maximum likelihood estimation of dependent processes, instrumental variables and general method of moments estimation, specification tests, and asymptotic and finite sample properties. Considerable attention is paid to the application of spatial econometric techniques in empirical practice using state of the art software. Pre-requisites include intermediate econometrics. Anselin, Spring.