This module teaches students the theoretical knowledge and practical skills necessary to develop and evaluate behaviour change interventions using...

Changing Behaviour: Intervention Development and Evaluation (BECH0002)

This module teaches students the theoretical knowledge and practical skills necessary to develop and evaluate behaviour change interventions using evidence-based methods. Specifically, students will learn how to apply four behavioural science tools and understand how they interlink and can be applied as a system in order to select target behaviours, conduct a behavioural diagnosis and develop and evaluate intervention strategies and policies to change behaviour. The four tools are the Capability Opportunity Motivation – Behaviour (COM-B) model, the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF), the Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW) and the Behaviour Change Techniques Taxonomy (BCTTv1). Students will be supported through interactive workshops, collaborative group work and formative feedback to apply these tools to a range of practical problems spanning different topic areas.

This module presents a combination of economic theory and case studies that highlight past failures of infrastructure investment, and investigates the reasons...

Agency and Transaction Costs in Infrastructure Projects (BCPM0020)

This module presents a combination of economic theory and case studies that highlight past failures of infrastructure investment, and investigates the reasons behind these failures.

Aims:

To teach you the latest developments in the theory of finance and optimal risk allocation, and to explore the relevance of this theory specifically for infrastructure projects.
	To provide you with real world examples of significant financial and economic loss attributed to inappropriate project mechanism design which failed to mitigate the effect of information asymmetries and sunk costs.
	To show how this asymmetry of information and vulnerability to hold-up may affect the behaviour of agents and create perverse incentives.
To review the processes and features applied in real world contexts that aim to mitigate the impact of opportunism, hidden information and hidden action and appraise their effectiveness.

Learning objectives:

To equip you with an understanding of the economic theory of why financing structure and risk allocation may affect the underlying economic efficiency of infrastructure investment, and knowledge of relevant evidence.
	Knowledge of application of economic theory of agency and transaction cost economics to illuminate and explain cases. You will learn from case studies about the kind of problems that can arise in infrastructure projects if hold-up, perverse incentive, moral hazard and adverse selection problems are not appropriately solved. Business cases in the various sectors and provide critique based on ex post information.