Find out more about studying International Finance and Political Relations, MSc at University of Aberdeen? We've gathered all the key details, entry requirements, modules, fees, and more. Take the next step by booking an open day to explore it for yourself.
MSc - Master of Science
Old Aberdeen Campus
Full Time
Jan 2027
1 Year
This programme combines the strengths of the School of Social Science and the Business School to explore the intersection between money, politics and power and the relationship between international finance and policymaking at the transnational level.This programme is designed to train specialists for careers in the international finance or in the government/non-government (NGO) sectors, where an understanding of global flows of money, trade and labour, and the global distribution of wealth they engender, is required.Over the last few decades, there has been a steady increase in cross-border financial flows, as a result of the globalisation of financial markets. At the same time, we have witnessed fundamental societal and political changes and how nation-states behave and interact with one another, as well as technological advances and financial innovation.As a result, businesses, governments, and investors therefore face an ever-growing need to understand the relationship between political relations and international markets. By combining the key theories and themes in the study of international political economy with corporate finance and investments, this Masters programme addresses the need, by teaching the advanced skills needed to gather, analyse and evaluate information on the politics of international finance and to enable you to communicate how international finance, banking, and stock markets intersect with national and international political events. The MSc International Finance and Political Relations programme is designed to train specialists for careers in the international finance or in the government/non-government (NGO) sectors, where an understanding of global flows of money, trade and labour, and the global distribution of wealth they engender, is required. We welcome applications from students from across a wide range of academic backgrounds. You do not need a degree in business or politics to be considered for this programme.
Dimensions of Globalization (SO5512)
The dissertation in IPE enables students to develop in-depth knowledge of a topic of interest. Under close supervision by an expert on the topic selected, students have an opportunity to frame, develop, research and write a substantive and original thesis on a topic of their choosing.
The course will cover the main elements of Microeconomic Theory together with how this underpins the macro economy, covering consumer theory, how consumers choose under constraint of a budget, to generate demands. How this theory can be used to consider the welfare effects of price changes will be considered. The problem of production will be examined to understand the supply, and the demand and supply side will be drawn together to consider market structure. How the theory can be used to identify market supplies and demands from empirical data will be examined.
Like football, this course is a game of two halves. The first half is financial analysis and builds your ability to analyse companies and think about the implications of financial performance for investors. We will be using DataStream and Bloomberg software. In the second half we will think about how stock markets work and how they are regulated.
Introduces students to the key theories and themes in the disciplinary study of International Political Economy. Topics covered include global inequality and wealth distribution; financialization and crisis; precarization of work; global regulation of trade, labour, and money; gender, and the environment in the international political economy.
This course introduces students to basic financial concepts before moving on to introduce students to a number of areas of corporate finance including investment appraisal decisions, examining capital structure theory, the financing decisions of the firm, and corporate restructuring. The main aim of the course is to equip students with good analytical skills in order to understand the implications of corporate financing decisions by understanding why companies behave the way they do with respect to financing choices and how this interacts with the real world financial markets, and to enable students to understand the theoretical underpinnings of corporate finance theory.
This course examines theories and issues relevant to portfolio analysis. Themes include: risk and return; investment motives; the application of modern portfolio theory (including the Capital Asset Pricing Model); information and market efficiency; portfolio analysis and asset pricing; bonds and equities; real estate and derivative markets.
