Jascha Grübel

Author: Jascha Grübel

  • BSTP: Sailships to steamships and Limited Liability.

    The move from sail ships to steamships was driven beyond the technological developments by mail delivery (communication) and transportation of people. Sail ships remained a useful resource in heavy cargo with no time limits on delivery and only phased out with increased efficiency of steamships. The opening of global trade looked the world into steamships.…

  • BSTP: Industrial Revolution

    The topic of today is industrial revolution. Summed up in a phrase the transformation from ” muscle to machine”. Any transformation requires work/energy. Before the industrial revolution people relied on biological matter for work. The rate of energy conversion many orders of magnitude lower than in machines. This limitation extended to human growth potential. Engines…

  • CGSS: Introduction

    Complexity and Global Systems Science (CGSS) will cover Game Theory and mechanism design, complex network, socio-physics, and critical thinking essays regarding the topic. Complexity science is related to systems that are made up of thousands of units, whereas global systems describe large systems. Systemic instabilities are of a major interest and need to be understood.…

  • PIPP: Hierarchies in the Law

    In a national legal system there is usually public law (interaction between governments and citizens, e.g. a university awarding a degree to a student) and private law (interaction between citizens, companies in any combination, e.g. a university buying a computer). Private Law is divided into major families are Substantive Law and Commercial Law, whereas Public…

  • PIPP: Characteristics of Law

    Public Institutions and Policy-making Processes (PIPP) covers three modules: Law, general (Public) Institutions, and European and International Institutions in particular. The first part of the course will be about law. The focus is not on becoming a lawyer, but rather to be able to understand the thought processes behind legal decisions and their implications. Creation…

  • Urban Design I: Introduction

    The lecture will cover urban development in the following cities Berlin, Sarajevo, Caracas, Athens, Cape Town, New York, Sao Paulo and Detriot. The format to analysis these cities will be Urban Stories, using different tools to understand the process and development in each. Issues and Challenges Housing is a major issue in most urban areas.…

  • QPAM: Problem Definition

    Before a policy analysis can be performed, the underlying problem needs to be defined. Any problem definition is a function of what the author of the definition cares about and what they assume in terms of necessary relationships. Bardach suggested to be clear about what you care about and what you assume about the fact…

  • QPAM: Introduction

    Quantitative Policy Analysis and Modelling (QPAM) concerns itself with the goals that we set ourselves for society and how government can obtain these goals. The “Grüne Wirtschaft” initiative currently up for a referendum in Switzerland can be said to have the goal of a sustainable economy by 2050. If accepted it mandates to assess the…

  • Principles of Economics: Efficient Competitive Markets

    The goal of the lesson is to understand how markets work. We need a benchmark to analyse a market and it will be perfect competition. It is an idealised world where nobody has sufficient market power to influence the market and therefore good prices are exogenous. Also producers are altruistic inasmuch they do not consider…

  • Principles of Economics: Introduction

    The course’s objective is to introduce the study of economics, and the economic way of thinking about societal problems. It should provide basic understanding of a market economy and the potentials and limitations of economic policies. Economics is the study of how society manages scares resources to use them in the most efficient way. The…