News

CERGE-EI is localizing economics curriculum with support from the International Visegrad Fund

5 March, 2025

In the Fall 2024, the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, in partnership with the CERGE-EI Foundation, expanded the Distance Learning Program into a new project co-financed by Visegrad+ Grants from the International Visegrad Fund.

In addition to the course streaming, the project aims to develop localized materials for two courses, with regional instructors contextualizing content for students at partner institutions, supported by CERGE-EI main instructors and mentors.

The first course, Ethics and Finance, was streamed to five partner institutions in Armenia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine. Students benefited from the specialist course, which raises awareness and scrutiny to unethical financial behaviors including price manipulation, insider trading, and accounting frauds. Economic theories and globally notorious cases of financial fraud were put into perspective and complemented by local perspectives, from regulation, supervision and enforcement, to the main characteristics of financial markets and enforcement decisions. Over 60 students successfully completed the module.

"Local data and case studies help students to make connections between what they are learning in the classroom and their lives outside of school. They also help them to understand similarities and differences across countries. The literature on transition countries remains limited to non-existent. With the collected data and case studies, we are developing teaching materials for future use,” said Dr Laure de Batz, the main instructor for the Ethics and Finance course.

The second course, Climate Change Economics, will run in Spring 2025 and it will introduce students to economic instruments used to tackle externalities such as global warming and the economics of potential decarbonization technologies.            

The project is co-financed by the governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad+ Grants from the International Visegrad Fund. The mission of the Visegrad Fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.