Brief description
The lecture course, which takes place in the first two-thirds of the semester, will consider economic and social characteristics in broad outline, predominantly in an industrialised country context. The content will include problems of declining incomes from natural resource based industries; migration; rural economic accounting and modelling; and comparative European rural policies.

These topics will be considered in greater depth in the final third of the semester, in which each member of the course in turn presents a short introduction to a seminar group.

Learning outcomes
Learning outcomes:

On completion of this module, students should be able to:

? distinguish economic and social characteristics used in developing measures of rurality ;
? understand main methods of regional income calculation and modelling;
? compare and evaluate European rural and regional development policies;
? identify the main attributes of sustainable economic development.