I-Week 2020

Offered by the Faculty of Informatics and Statistics

Course in InSIS –4ES630, classroom – NB470

Mojca Bavdaž is Associate Professor at the School of Economics and Business, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. She has been working in the field official statistics for two decades, be it for teaching, research or consultancy. She has conducted research on data sources and data collection underlying official economic statistics as well as on dissemination, visualization and use of these data.

What is the role of official economic statistics in the world of information overload and fake news? How are official economic indicators presented and used in public debate (e.g. Brexit)? How can official economic indicators compete with alternative metrics? The course will equip students with fundamentals about the functioning and methodology of official statistics to critically evaluate indicators used in today’s world, judge implications for their quality and consider their power and limitations. The course will seek answers to the following questions:

• How does official economic statistics solve measurement challenges (e.g. definition of concepts and statistical units)?
• What data sources are used in the production of official economic statistics? How do methods of data collection contribute to the quality of official economic statistics? How does official statistics deal with modern challenges such as big data (e.g. mobile phone data, scanner data, satellite pictures) and integration of sources (e.g. administrative tax data with a survey)?
• What is the quality of official economic statistics?
• How are official economic statistics disseminated to reach its users? What communication channels and what visualization tools are used?

Offered by the Faculty of Informatics and Statistics

Course in InSIS – 4IT470, classroom – NB471

Tarja Keski-Mattinen, M.Sc. (Econ., CCIS) is a senior Lecturer and coordinator of Business Information Technology –program in Lahti UAS, with 20 years’ experience how IT is changing business, communication and education. Her main substance and interest are Information Technology in Business and Digital Communication. Since 2014 the digitalization, data-analytics and the value of data have been the most interesting subject. Digital transformation is changing our lives on a wider level, and more rapidly than we can even understand.

In this course students will learn:

• How the meaningful data can be recognized
•  What possibilities it gives for example in marketing purposes
• How to lead data-analytics development process in businesses

As a result, in this course, students will prepare a detailed plan, how to implement the dataanalytics development process in a certain business case. They will learn what is important to be taken into account in a process, and what kind of skills and talent is needed to succeed. Student can focus on cases announced by the lecturer, or they can bring their own.
Course material will be shared at the beginning of the course.

Offered by the Faculty of Informatics and Statistics

Course in InSIS – 4IZ573, classroom – NB459

Prof. Dr. Martin Knahl is programme manager for the Business Application Architectures Master at Furtwangen University and Pro-Dean for Teaching at the Faculty of Business Information Systems. He currently teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in German and English in the areas of Business Management and Business Information Systems.

This module addresses IT Management approaches and consulting techniques with a focus on IT Service Management, IT-Governance and IT Architecture. It further addresses the principles behind the planning, operation and management of IT Infrastructures and the efficient provision of services.

• To impart knowledge of contemporary IT Management approaches
• To recognise the problems of current approaches with regards to management and integrated service provisioning
• To impart a critical insight into the issues, problems and possible solutions surrounding the planning, operation, maintenance and governance of IT infrastructures
• The module aims to develop an understanding of concepts and techniques involved in planning, running and managing an operational IT infrastructure

Course syllabus:

• Review of conceptual frameworks and principles of contemporary IT and communication technologies (eg reference models, benchmarking, Service Level Agreements, Quality of Service)
• Planning, implementation and operation of IT Infrastructures and Integrated Service Provisioning
• Frameworks, standards and tools for IT Service Management (eg ITIL)
• Frameworks, standards and tools for IT Governance (eg COBIT)
• Security, Legal, Ethical and Social Issues

Offered by the Faculty of Informatics and Statistics

Course in InSIS – 4SA630, classroom – NB456

Andreja Pucihar is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Maribor in Slovenia. She holds a Ph.D. in information systems. Her recent research is mainly focused to IS innovation, digitalization and digital transformation, with particular focus on business models. She has been involved into several national, international (EU, CE, cross-border, bilateral) and industry projects, mostly focused to challenges of digital transformation of small and medium sized enterprises. She is also a representative from research institutions in the national initiative Smart cities and communities for the field of digital transformation. She also serves as a University representative in Digital Innovation Hub of Slovenia.

The evolution of digital technologies and solutions has significantly impacted the way in which business is conducted and have big implications on our lives. Nowadays digital economy calls for transformation of businesses, governments, education and societies as whole. This course is aimed to provide insights into methods and tools for business model design and innovation in the context of digitalization and digital transformation. The course participants will work in teams and design their own business model, following design thinking techniques.

Course syllabus:

• Digitalization and digital transformation
• Disruptive technologies and their impact on business models
• Definitions of business models, business models methods and tools
• Cases of digital business models
• Design of digital business models – turn your idea into business

Offered by the Faculty of Finance and Accounting

Course in InSIS – 1MT555 , classroom – SB104

Associate Professor RNDr. Ing. Peter Molnár PhD. is originally from Slovakia. He obtained a masters degree in physics from Charles University, Prague and masters degree in finance from Prague University of Economics and Business. Afterwards he moved to Norway. He obtained a PhD degree from Norwegian School of Economics, Bergen, Norway. Subsequently he worked at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway and is currently employed at University of Stavanger, Norway.

This course describes key aspects of financial investments. We will cover material on basic financial instruments, risk management, and asser pricing models. We will discuss both traditional models and modern models based on information choise and examine their performance in the context of current financial conditions.

Course syllabus:

• Asset pricing models: brief introduction to financial assres and how securities are traded; return, risk and the risk-return tradeoff;  capital asset pricing model, systematic versus idiosyncratic risk; Fama-French 3-factor model; Carhart 4-factor model; brief introduction to other multifactor models
• Volatility modelling: distribution of stock returns; autocorrelation in returns, and autocorrelation in squared returns; GARCH volatility models; highest and lowest price of the day and how it improves volatility models; realized volatility
• Brief introduction to risk management: value at risk; quantila regression and its application in value at risk
• Interesting topics and data sources: realized volatility (introduced previously), economics policy uncertainty, google trends, cryptocurrencies

Offered by the Faculty of Finance and Accounting

Course in InSIS – 1FU555 , classroom – NB472

Course syllabus:

• Sources of corporate capital: two primary sources of funding corporate assets and operations: equity vs. debt, funding businesses through liabilities: private debt (bank loans, leases and operating payables) and public debt (corporate bonds), funding businesses through equity: private equity funds and public equity issues (including crowdfunding), mixed and other forms of corporate funds (including convertible debt and public grants)
• Making capital structure decisions: Advantages and disadvantages of two sources of capital (debt and equity), risk / return tradeoff in capital structure decisions (i.e. impact of debt and equity on investment return to shareholders), principles of designing target capital structure (including evaluation of company’s exposure to operating business risks)
• Comprehensive real-life case study: financial results, capital structure and investment risks of Lufthansa group: preliminary analysis of Lufthansa Group’s business risks and financial results, evaluation of Lufthansa Group’s financial standing by retrospective ratio analysis, evaluation of Lufthansa’s operating and financial risks by prospective analysis, conclusions about Lufthansa’s economic performance, capital structure and investment risks
• Making company public – regulatory requirements and reporting to investors: regulatory requirements regarding companies listed on stock exchanges, types and content of reports published by public companies, selected problems of reliability of financial statements published by public companies

Offered by the Faculty of Economics

Course in InSIS – 5EN381, classroom – NB457

Liyou Borga is a Research Associate at the University of Luxembourg. Before that, he was a Junior Researcher at CERGE-EI (Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education – Economics Institute) in Prague, Czech Republic, where he obtained his PhD. His main research interest lies in labour economics and applied econometrics. He is particularly interested in skill formation, child development, intrahousehold resource allocation, and measurement of poverty and vulnerability.

This course is aimed at providing a methodological toolbox that students will be able to apply in the specialization-specific module and in their thesis. The course covers empirical strategies for applied micro research questions. It is particularly suitable for students who are interested in research in an applied microeconomics field such as Development Economics, Political Economy, Labor Economics, International Economics; and to a lesser extent for students in Macro and Finance. The objective is to help students better understand scientific readings as well as conduct their own research. The topics covered will be applied in nature and illustrated with concrete examples from the literature. Participating students are required to have a basic understanding of statistics and elementary econometrics.

• Course Syllabus:Empirical Analysis in Economics
• Threats to causal identification
• Experimental approach to causal identification
• Instrumental Variables
• Differences in Differences
• Regression Discontinuity
• Miscellaneous econometric methods