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Economics of Safety and Security

Vak
2023-2024

Admission requirements

Mandatory course for students enrolled in the bachelor’s programme Security Studies. Only students of the Bachelor Security Studies can take this course.
This course is also open for inbound exchange students. Exchange students must be admitted by the FGGA International Office prior to the start of the course.

Description

In your future job as an academic or as a professional in the safety and security domain you will be confronted with economic dimensions of safety and security. For example, professionals, politicians, media, and citizens regularly put forward economic arguments regarding safety and security. Also, governance strategies and policy measures are adopted or rejected based on economic grounds. Further, safety and security challenges have economic causes and/or consequences. Therefore this course aims to provide you with basic economic knowledge and skills.

We will study the economic phenomena and concepts with the focus on several topic areas such as crime, behavioural public policy (nudging), climate change, war and conflict and geoeconomics.

Course objectives

After this course students are able to:

  • Understand the economic dimensions of safety and security in terms of cause, effect, and impact on individual, group, and societal level.

  • Acquire basic knowledge and understand economic dimensions of governing security and safety in terms of governance strategies, practices and dilemmas.

  • Apply basic economic concepts to security and/or safety challenges and governance strategies.

  • Identify and evaluate the economic dimensions of security challenges and strategies and construct a logical judgement about these.

  • Construct informed arguments on economics of security in both academic and professional contexts.

Timetable

On the right side of the programme front page you will find links to the website and timetables, uSis and Brightspace.

Mode of instruction

7 plenary lectures.
4 course labs in smaller groups.

Attendance of the course labs is mandatory. If you miss more than 1 course lab you fail the course and won’t obtain a final grade.

Total study load of 140 hours

  • Contact hours: 33

  • Self-study hours (including assignments): 104

  • Examination: 3

Assessment method

Written Mid-term Assignment

  • 25% of final grade

  • Grade must be compensated

  • Resit is not possible

In-class Participation

  • 15% of final grade

  • Grade must be compensated

  • Resit is not possible

Final Written Exam

  • 60% of final grade

  • Grade must be 5.50 or higher

  • Resit of a fail is possible

  • Resit will take the same form

Students will also be permitted to resit the final written exam (50%) if they have a calculated overall course grade lower than 5.50.

Transitional Arrangement
Following the restructuring of the course “Economics of Safety and Security”, the new assessment methods were introduced. Students who participated in this course in the academic year 2022/2023 but did not obtain a sufficient grade to pass the course will fall under the assessment requirements as specified in the studyguide from 2022/2023 if one of the following situations applies:

  • they obtained 5.5 or more for Assignment 2 (Security Today)

  • they failed the course due to Assignment 2 (Security Today) and aim to redo this assignment in the academic year 2023/2024 (possibly along with other previously failed assessments)

  • they obtained a grade lower than 5.5 (but greater than 0.0) for Assignment 2 (Security Today) and aim to compensate for this component by redoing other previously failed assessments

  • they failed the course due to insufficient presence in the course labs
    All other students will be subject to new assessments as specified in the studyguide from 2023/2024.

In the case of written assessment methods, the examiner can always initiate a follow-up conversation with the student to establish whether the learning objectives have been met.

Reading list

A selection of books and articles will be announced on Brightspace.

Registration

Register yourself via MyStudymap for each course, workgroup and exam (not all courses have workgroups and/or exams).
Do so on time, before the start of the course; some courses and workgroups have limited spaces. You can view your personal schedule in MyTimetable after logging in.
Registration for this course is possible from Tuesday 12 December 13.00h

Leiden University uses Brightspace as its online learning management system. After enrolment for the course in MyStudymap you will be automatically enrolled in the Brightspace environment of this course. Furthermore, announcements and modifications will be communicated via Brightspace. Students have the responsibility to stay informed and are thus advised to regularly check Brightspace for updates.

More information on registration via MyStudymap can be found on this page.

Please note: guest-/contract-/exchange students do not register via MyStudymap but via uSis.

Contact

dr. Jaroslaw Kantorowicz

Remarks

For exceptions, please contact the Board of Examiners.