This course gives a systematic introduction into socioeconomics: a research perspective that emphasizes the economy’s embeddedness in society and, by extension, nature. After defining socioeconomics and linking it with similar approaches (political economy, economic sociology, social-ecological economics), the embeddedness paradigm is introduced as a framework for socioeconomic research and developed with regard to understandings of actors, relations, institutions, systems, and rationalities. To demonstrate the added value and distinctiveness of socioeconomic research perspectives, the course revisits central institutions of modern capitalist systems, including the market, the state, law, work and money, whose workings and meanings are explored going beyond formal definitions. Building on this, the discussion turns to complex institutional constellations: the socioeconomic regimes of affluent countries, with a focus on their internal trade-offs and externalities as well as their interactions and transformations in the context of economic integration.

This course complements other courses in the introductory and main program phases of the BBE program ('Contemporary Challenges in Business and Economics', 'Foundations in Micro- and Macroeconomics', 'History of Economics and the Economy'), by offering an integrative account of the economy and its manifold institutions, which is informed by different social scientific disciplines and approaches.

In the summer term 2024, this course will be held online, in a synchronous distance-learning format, with attendance rules being the same as in on-campus teaching. Please reserve the time-slots for active participation.

In this course, regular attendance is both assumed and recommended, and a condition to achieve a very good grade. However, the formal attendance requirement is reduced to 50%, and the course can also be successfully completed at this minimum level of attendance. Attendance as such will not be monitored, but in-class activities in the form of online quizzes add up to 20% of the total grade.

Grading is based on the following components: 

• Out-of-class preparation (reading and multimedia tasks): 20%
• Online quizzes on basics, institutions, and constellations (distributed over the whole semester): 20%
• Group work with peer assessment and multimedia presentation (complementing lectures 3-7): 30%
• Final exam (written exam ON CAMPUS, date/time/place as scheduled above): 30%

The grading scheme is as follows:

≥ 90 % excellent (1)

≥ 80 % good (2)

≥ 70 % satisfactory (3)

≥ 60 % sufficient (4)

< 60 % fail (5) 

Important rules:

• There is no general opportunity to compensate for a missed group presentation with peer assessment. It is expected that the members of a group flexibly arrange the workload, so that they can deal with minor contingencies on their own. Only in exceptional, well-justified cases, the teacher may offer a second opportunity to do, or compensate for, a group presentation with peer assessment.
• Students who miss the final exam for reasons outside their control generally have to give notice to the lecturer by email before the exam starts. Reasons of absence have to be substantiated by suitable evidence as early as possible. Only in this case, students can take the exam on a later date to be specified by the teaching administration. This possibility is only given once. Moreover, students can retake a failed exam, if the student achieved at least 10% of the total points of the exam. Passed exams cannot be retaken.