If you ever wondered about international transport flows, the functioning of cities, the activities in ports, location decisions by companies, deregulation of the transport sector and the movement of people, you might be just the perfect student for us. The Erasmus School of Economics offers a special Master?s programme in Urban, Port and Transport Economics to help you understand how fundamental changes in technology, social values, politics and demography have a serious impact on the ?spatial-economic landscape?. From an abstract point of view, this landscape consists of nodes (cities, stations, seaports, airports etc.) and linkages (infrastructure, transport systems, logistics structures, etc.). The transition to a global economy, accelerated by European integration, leads to increasing physical and virtual traffic flows, new patterns of business locations and new factors of competition.

Innovations in ICT (such as online shopping or electronic data transmission in logistic chains), the introduction of new transport modes (such as the high-speed train) and the emergence of the knowledge economy bring along new sources of competition. Such trends not only lead to changes in the behaviour of citizens, companies and governments, but also to changes in transport networks, logistic systems and competitive positions of city regions. This highly dynamic environment continuously presents new problems and challenges to scholars, policy makers and public and private managers around the world.

The Master?s programme in Urban, Port and Transport Economics aims to describe and analyse the society by combining views and theories from urban and transport economics. The integration between urban economics and transport economics manifests itself in various ways: for instance, spatial systems and transport networks are strongly interwoven; the competitiveness of a city depends amongst others on its accessibility and the efficiency of shipping depends primarily on port quality.

In addition, the programme intends to provide knowledge that is helpful in formulating policies that give direction to the future orientation of nodes and linkages in the spatial-economic landscape. In an urbanised country like the Netherlands, which owes part of its wealth to (the organisation of) transport flows, the study of urban and transport economics is of prime importance. In this respect, the Rotterdam region, the ?Gateway to Europe?, offers a highly dynamic and inspiring environment for research in cooperation with companies and governmental bodies.

Mission

To provide advanced knowledge in those fields of economics that take into account the dimension of space (location, distance, transport) and that focus on the spatial economic behaviour of families, companies and governments. This prime objective is split up in a range of objectives related to the study of economics of ports, transport and logistics as well as the study of the economic development and management of cities and regions. The programme combines theory and practice and builds on a longstanding tradition and wide international research experience. A better understanding of major issues in the fields of urban and transport economics are provided, giving the opportunity for students to acquire both academic knowledge and practical skills applicable to the problems faced by today's managers from the private as well as the public sector.