Academic Programme

• Objectives

The European Master in Agricultural, Food and Environmental Policy Analysis aims at providing a high quality education in designing and assessing public policies targeted to the agricultural and food sector as well as the rural environment.  The programme is policy oriented, focused on economic analysis, but with a strong multidisciplinary component.  By the setting of criteria of admission and by courses in advanced microeconomic theory and quantitative methods the programme provides the basis for applied policy analysis founded on state of the art economic models and econometric tools.  Drawing on complementary, specialized teaching and research expertise of professors from several universities the Master programme offers teaching relevant for the analysis of agriculture, food and environmental policy issues within a unified framework exposing students to policy traditions in different European countries.

Students are required during their studies for the Master degree to be associated with at least two of the five universities involved in the programme.  This gives students from Europe and from the rest of the world the opportunity to establish a rich professional and academic network involving fellow students and teachers associated with the programme. In this and other ways the programme assists students to obtain access to universities in Europe and beyond in the pursuit of further academic qualifications to undertake agricultural, food and environmental policy analysis.
Academically the programme distinguishes itself from existing programmes in Europe by

• being policy oriented,
• being based on state of the art training in microeconomics and micro-econometrics,
• combining the analysis of agricultural and environmental policy issues within unified economic framework, however also exposing students to multidisciplinary approaches.

• Learning outcomes

The European Master in Agricultural, Food and Environmental Policy Analysis trains graduate students that will be:
1. aware of the economic, social and environmental dimensions of the performance and competitiveness of the agricultural and food sectors and other profit (market) and non-profit (non-market) activities in rural areas,
2. able to understand the fundamentals of recent economic theory as well as its strengths and weaknesses,
3. able to use and apply adequate methods and tools to address and analyse socio-economic and environmental problems that are observed or anticipated in the agricultural and food sectors and rural areas in different development contexts,
4. able to use complementary approaches from other disciplines when needed,
5. able to perform sound quantitative economic analysis and anticipate possible effects of policy and regulation reforms,
6. able to interpret results and derive policy implications and recommendations,
7. able to draw from European experience and expertise in designing and evaluating policy and regulatory reforms given the economic, social, environmental and ethical dimensions of the issues facing societies expressing structural change,
8. able to communicate their methods and results to both specialised and non-specialised audiences, hopefully in at least two European languages.

The main objective of this Master Course is that recipients be qualified to use and apply adequate methods to analyse socio-economic problems, formulate policy recommendations and  understand the risks and consequences of any given economic policy measures, especially those oriented towards agricultural and food sector, rural areas as well as natural resources and their environment.  In particular, recipients are expected to be able to use and develop quantitative methods to perform rigorous socio-economic and environmental assessment of these public policies, and provide sound and relevant policy recommendations to a better sustainable development of rural areas.

Recipients are qualified to take responsibilities in international, national and regional agencies, non-governmental organisations, consultancy firms, professional organisations and private companies such as banks, insurances and agricultural, environmental and food business.