Courses tagged with "Biology" (333)

Did you know that there are more than 270 free trade agreements in the world and that they cover half of global trade? Latin American and Caribbean countries take part in 70 such agreements, covering 70% of intra-regional trade.

What do you need to know about these agreements? What opportunities, challenges and implications do they have for people, businesses, and countries? What can be done to maximize their benefits?

In this course you will analyze in depth the provisions of regional and multilateral trade agreements and why countries in Latin America and the Caribbean still face important obstacles to fully take advantage of them. You will learn about new trends, emerging issues and dynamics, and possible future scenarios in trade agreements from renowned academics, researchers, and trade policy makers.

This course is aimed at those interested in learning the practical aspects of how trade agreements work, and how to make the most of them.

Learn how to get your new venture funded. Understand capital structure for new ventures. Develop an understanding of investor pitches.

This course provides an engaging and methodical insight into the past and present cultural and commercial music industry developments, directions, and trends. It will equip the students with the knowledge and skills necessary to appreciate, understand and more productively participate in today’s music industry field.

Nudge-it is an multi-disciplinary European research project studying new ways of establishing and reinforcing healthy eating habits. Join us to learn about eating, appetite and obesity.

This course covers the basics of normal nutrition for optimal health outcomes and evidence-based diets for a variety of diseases.

Como está caracterizada Previdência Social no Brasil? Qual sua relevância para o entendimento das finanças públicas e para as decisões individuais dos trabalhadores?

This course is all about energy: what it is, how it is produced, the positive and negative effects, and renewable energy technology. Experts from UC San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and industry will explain concepts and present information on this important topic. Come learn all about energy and what our future holds!

As Parcerias Público-Privadas (PPPs) tornaram-se um instrumento essencial para o crescimento produtivo, econômico e social dos países da América Latina e Caribe. Ao desenvolver e programar as PPPs observam-se restrições nas capacidades técnicas dos responsáveis, em especial no setor público.

Para preencher esta lacuna, IDBx desenvolveu este curso, o primeiro MOOC disponível em Português para aprender a planejar, projetar e implementar PPPs para projetos de desenvolvimento no Brasil e na América Latina e no Caribe.

Este curso busca dividir experiências de instituições internacionais líderes com a finalidade de ajudar a diminuir lacunas de conhecimento na utilização efetiva das PPPs, oferecendo ideias, soluções e lições aprendidas para lidar com os desafios ou restrições às capacidades técnicas e administrativas do setor público da região. As lições contidas no MOOC se aplicam a diferentes setores como infraestrutura, saúde, educação, banda larga e setor fiscal, levando em conta contextos nacionais de vários países da região, incluindo Brasil, Peru, México e Colômbia.

Para este efeito, o curso coloca à disposição dos participantes leituras selecionadas, vídeos, tutoriais de análises e outros recursos de aprendizagem.

O curso é baseado nos conteúdos do Guia de Referência sobre Parcerias Público-Privadas (PPPs) versão 2.0, desenvolvido e publicado em 2014 pelo BID, Banco Mundial (BM) e Banco Asiático de Desenvolvimento (ADB).

A elaboração deste curso foi financiada pelo Programa Especial para o Desenvolvimento Institucional (SPID). Mais informações em SPID.

En las próximas décadas, las pensiones se convertirán en uno de los ejes centrales de las políticas económicas y sociales en América Latina y el Caribe (ALC).

¿La razón? En 2050 habrá en la región el triple de adultos mayores que ahora, con una mayor esperanza de vida y, por lo tanto mayores necesidades de atención.

Esos adultos mayores del futuro están hoy en un mercado de trabajo donde sólo 4 de cada 10 trabajadores contribuyen a un sistema de pensiones. Esto significa que en la actualidad 130 millones de personas están trabajando sin ahorrar para su pensión en ALC.

En ausencia de reformas, incluso con un crecimiento sostenido en la región, 1 de cada 2 jubilados no tendrá una pensión o esta no será adecuada, dejando entre 66 y 83 millones de adultos mayores dependiendo de las familias o del Estado para su manutención, lo que será económica, fiscal y socialmente insostenible.

Por otra parte, aquellos sistemas que prometen beneficios más generosos tienen baja cobertura y eventuales problemas de equidad y sustentabilidad. Lo que genera un importante desafío, ya que el aumentar la cobertura bajo el mismo diseño puede mejorar la situación financiera en el corto plazo, pero acrecentar los problemas de sustentabilidad en el largo plazo.

En este curso comprenderemos las complejidades que afronta el mercado de trabajo en ALC y, por ende, su sistema de pensiones. Vamos a esclarecer las políticas que se pueden formular en los diferentes contextos de la Región que podrían llevar a un funcionamiento de sistemas de pensiones más eficientes, financieramente sostenibles y equitativos y así ofrecer “mejores pensiones” a todos los adultos mayores, no solo a unos pocos.

La preparación de este curso fue financiada por el Programa Especial para el Desarrollo Institucional (SPID) del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo. Mayor información en la página web del SPID.

Personal and Family Financial Planning will address many critical personal financial management topics in order to help you learn prudent habits both while in school and throughout your lifetime.

Have you ever watched the evening news and wondered what the anchor meant when she said: “…and the Dow closed 50 points in choppy trading today.”

Have you ever watched Mad Money on CNBC as the host screamed BUY BUY BUY or SELL SELL SELL and clapped your hands with his energy while having no clue what was happening?

Have you watched a movie where successful Wall Street characters dropped cool sounding financial jargon and you smiled and nodded without knowing what they were saying?

Have you ever had someone talk about Roth IRAs and 401Ks, and as you nodded, your heart was racing?

Have you ever received multiple credit card solicitations in the mail and wondered which ones to sign up for or even if to sign up for any at all?

If you answered yes to any (and maybe all) of the above then this class is for you.

Want to better understand investments? How credit works? How and why insurance products like life insurance, health insurance, and property insurance might be relevant for you? How to maximize your retirement savings? This course aims to make finding the answers to these questions, and many other similar questions, interesting and fun.

This personal finance course is divided into four modules: investments, credit, insurance and retirement. Each module is independent and may be studied on its own, although studying them together provides a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness across modules and the various tradeoffs across them.

Throughout the course, we will explore interesting and relevant real world examples so that you can better understand the underlying concepts. We will also relate relevant academic research to the topic on hand and show how the research findings are relevant to your daily financial decisions.

This course provides practical, ready-to-use solutions to use in your daily life. All solutions may not be equally important for you given your age and priorities, but they will certainly be relevant to you at some point in your life.

Ready to take control of your finances? Whether you are saving for a house or retirement, struggling with your taxes, or wondering if you should invest in education/training, stocks or bonds, there are many questions when it comes to personal finances. There are many benefits, both long and short term, to learning the keys of financial planning and becoming a financially savvy consumer.

This course will teach you to think financially about investing in yourself and your future. We will discuss investments in education and training and show you how to use important economic tools to evaluate whether the investments you make are worth it financially. We will also show you how to make the most of your skills and abilities whether you work for yourself or someone else. This includes such things as evaluating salary and benefit packages and figuring out how to get health insurance coverage and save for retirement.

This portion of Personal Finance covers:

• Human Capital Investment
• Net Present Value (NPV)
• Internal Rate of Return (IRR)
• Parameterized Spreadsheet Analysis
• Employment Contracts & Making the Most of Work Benefits
• Developing a Business Plan
• Paying for Health Insurance and Saving for Retirement When You Are Self-Employed

Join us today and take control of your personal finances!

Firms such as Apple, Alibaba, Facebook, SalesForce, Uber and Yelp operate as platform ecosystems that match buyers and sellers, gain value and market share from network effects, and harness their users to innovate.

This course teaches you how to convert products to platforms and how to generate platform innovation. You will learn how to negotiate platform startup, convert existing businesses, and make vital decisions on issues of openness, cannibalization, and competition.

You will discover how to apply concepts from two sided networks, information asymmetry, pricing, intellectual property, and game theory to real problems.

This course is taught by the instructor who literally wrote the book on this topic, “Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy—and How to Make Them Work for You.”

This course is part of both the Digital Leadership and Product Management MicroMasters programs.

Interrupted time series analysis and regression discontinuity designs are two of the most rigorous ways to evaluate policies with routinely collected data. ITSx comprehensively introduces analysts to interrupted time series analysis (ITS) and regression discontinuity designs (RD) from start to finish, including selection and setup of data sources, statistical analysis, interpretation and presentation, and identification of potential pitfalls.

At the conclusion of the course, students will have all the tools necessary to propose, conduct and correctly interpret an analysis using ITS and RD approaches. This will help them position themselves as a go-to person within their company, government department, or academic department as the technical expert on this topic.

ITS and RD designs avoid many of the pitfalls associated with other techniques. As a result of their analytic strength, the use of ITS and RD approaches has been rapidly increasing over the past decade. These studies have cut across the social sciences, including:

• Studying the effect of traffic speed zones on mortality
• Quantifying the impact of incentive payments to workers on productivity
• Assessing whether alcohol policies reduce suicide
• Measuring the impact of incentive payments to physicians on quality of care
• Determining whether the use of HPV vaccination influences adolescent sexual behavior

South Korea presents a compelling story of economic growth. It’s one of few countries that made the transition from a resource-poor, low-income nation to a high-income economy in only three decades. It offers a model for developing countries and in this MOOC, leading experts will explain how South Korea achieved this outcome by implementing an export-led industrial strategy.

This course examines South Korea’s past developmental experience as well as its current strategy and policy initiatives to overcome global and domestic challenges, and sustain economic growth into the 21st century. You’ll have an opportunity to consider and discuss institutional and policy lessons applicable to the developmental challenges facing your own countries.

The course will be of interest to all those wanting to learn how South Korea was transformed into a high-income, with the help of a highly skilled workforce, and the development of high-end manufacturing and services sectors. Also of great interest is Korea’s creation of a futuristic city, Songdo, equipped with smart and green technologies. This MOOC will be of particular interest to policymakers involved in economic development.

The course has been developed by the World Bank Group in collaboration with Korea Development Institute, and is taught by prominent representatives of academic and research institutions in South Korea and the United States.

This is an introductory course on options and other financial derivatives, and their applications to risk management. We will start with discrete-time, binomial trees models, but most of the course will be in the framework of continuous-time, Brownian Motion driven models. A basic introduction to Stochastic, Ito Calculus will be given. The benchmark model will be the Black-Scholes-Merton pricing model, but we will also discuss more general models, such as stochastic volatility models. We will discuss both the Partial Differential Equations approach, and the probabilistic, martingale approach. We will also cover an introduction to modeling of interest rates and fixed income derivatives.

I teach the same class at Caltech, as an advanced undergraduate class. This means that the class may be challenging, and demand serious effort. On the other hand, successful completion of the class will provide you with a full understanding of the standard option pricing models, and will enable you to study the subject further on your own, or otherwise. You should have a working knowledge of basic calculus, statistics, and probability and be interested in the use of mathematical modeling. Please go to Unit 0 in the Course Outline to take the prerequisites assessment.

Quantitative and model-based introduction to basic ideas in economics, and applications to a wide range of real world problems.

This course provides a quantitative and model-based introduction to basic economic principles, and teaches how to apply them to make sense of a wide range of real world problems. Examples of applications include predicting the impact of technological changes in market prices, calculating the optimal gasoline tax, and measuring the value of new products. This is a real Caltech class. It will be taught concurrently to Caltech and on-line students. This has two implications. On the costs side: the class is challenging, makes extensive use of calculus, and will demand significant effort. On the benefit side: successful completion of the class will provide you with an in-depth understanding of basic economics, and will permanently change the way you see the world.

This course provides a quantitative and model-based introduction to basic economic principles, and teaches how to apply them to make sense of a wide range of real world problems. Examples of applications include predicting the impact of technological changes in market prices, calculating the optimal gasoline tax, and measuring the value of new products. This is a real Caltech class. It will be taught concurrently to Caltech and on-line students. This has two implications. On the costs side: the class is challenging, makes extensive use of calculus, and will demand significant effort. On the benefit side: successful completion of the class will provide you with an in-depth understanding of basic economics, and will permanently change the way you see the world.

All of us are affected by macroeconomic forces – they shape the very world we live in. And governments all around the world try to shape those forces in ways that (hopefully) improve the lives of their constituents. In this subject, we will examine the major theories used by macro economists to analyse national economies and the international economy.