Behaviour, Economics and Evolution specialisation

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At the end of the course the students will be able to:

• Interact with biologists and economists alike and thus foster and stimulate interactions between these two fields of study.


• Respond to a biological question of behaviour and / or conservation and resource management by mobilising relevant economic science concepts.

Biologists study behavioral interactions to better understand, for example, how organisms evolve and interact with their respective environments. Economists study behavioral interactions to better understand, for example, how efficiency and cooperation can be achieved within groups given limited resources. This is useful for biology and we believe it is time for economists and biologists to join forces and learn from each other.

With the BEE program we aim at an integrative understanding of behavioral interactions between individuals in their environment, using knowledge from both economics and evolutionary biology. Three Masters of Science programs of the University of Lausanne contribute to this unique specialisation: the MSc Management and MSc Economics from the Faculty of Business and Economics, and the MSc Behavior, Evolution and Conservation from the Faculty of Biology and Medicine. The BEE program accepts students from the three contributing Masters and offers disciplinary, cross-disciplinary, and inter-disciplinary courses.

You will study evolutionary mechanisms favoring human life history, the limits to rationality, or how organizations are shaped. You will learn tools and methods to address practical questions such as how to sustainably harvest a resource or how to devise institutional rules to achieve conservation goals.

We believe that the BEE specialisation will expand your career horizon, and if you want to know more about this you can read this document explaining why Economics matters for an MSc BEC biologist.

The study plan, course schedules, course descriptions can be found on Study programme.