SEMESTER: Fall 2019

COURSE NUMBER: EW277-11

COURSE TITLE: Political Risk of Investing

UNITS OF CREDIT: 1 Units

INSTRUCTOR: Mark Y. Rosenberg, PhD

MEETING DAY(S)/TIME: Sunday 9/8 and Sunday 9/15, 9AM - 5PM

Please note the format of this course, which meets on two full Sundays. You must attend both sessions in their entirety in order to earn a passing grade.

PREREQUISITE(S): None. However, working knowledge of political economy and macoo-economics is expected.

CAREER FIELD: The course is relevant for students engaged with finance/asset management, the core functions of multinational corporations (especially Strategy, Treasury, Public/ Government Affairs and Security functions) and/or those of international organizations more broadly. ESG concerns are also highly relevant.

CLASS FORMAT

Interactive Lecture: 70%
Team Projects/Breakouts: 30%

REQUIRED READINGS: Course reader and readings on reserve (inc. cases)

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE:

Class participation: 25%
Proposal: Political Risk Analysis: 15%
Political Risk Analysis (2-3 page paper): 60%

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:

As the impact of politics on markets and business has become clearer to investors, so has the dearth of systematic tools for evaluating and managing political risk. This course fills this gap by providing business students and professionals with a solid, highly accessible foundation for identifying and analyzing political risks, and teaching critical methods for navigating these risks in a range of markets and sectors. The course will explore the economic impacts of geopolitics—including issues of war, peace, and international trade--along with the country and sector-specific risks driven by politics at the national/sub-national level. Specific topics include elections and political transitions, social unrest, the politics of economic and investment policies, state capitalism, as well as the economic consequences of a shifting global political order. It will establish distinctions between political risks in developed and emerging markets, and highlight best practices for making practical forecasts of a country’s or sector’s risk outlook.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Mark is UC Berkeley-educated political economist specializing in geopolitical risk analysis and the co-founder and CEO of GeoQuant, a technology company fusing political science and computer science to transform political/country risk analysis. He teaches teach political risk analysis at Columbia-SIPA and Berkeley Haas School of Business, and publishes and speaks internationally on geopolitical risk.

At Berkeley, Mark trained in game theory with Robert Powell and African politics/economics with Robert Price, Leonardo Arriola, and Edward Miguel; he was also a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Fellow. He went on to work as an Africa Analyst at the pre-eminent political risk firm Eurasia Group (EG) and soon became Director of Africa, Comparative Analytics and Research Management. Mark led product development at EG and helped manage its global research platform of 60+ analysts covering over 90 countries and a range of sectors. He developed EG's Political Trajectories--which forecasts political and economic risks/opportunities at the country level--and was a core developer of the Political Risk Country Portfolio, an asset allocation strategy based on custom measures of political risk. Previously, Mark helped build Freedom House's well-known democracy index and edited the organization’s flagship Freedom in the World publication.