Enrollment year
2019/2020
Academic discipline
SECS-P/01 (POLITICAL ECONOMY)
Department
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS AND MANAGEMENT
Course
BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
Curriculum
PERCORSO COMUNE
Period
(28/09/2020 - 22/12/2020)
Lesson hours
66 lesson hours
Activity type
WRITTEN TEST
Prerequisites
Students are required to know basic notions in Math (specifically, properties of logs, basic calculus and study of functions), in Microeconomics (utility function, indifference curve, production function, scale return, factors’ marginal productivity) and in Data Analysis (notions in probability, central tendency and variability indices).
Learning outcomes
The class aims to provide students with basic theoretical models to understand the working of a macroeconomic system. Furthermore, it aims to provide the skill to critically apply these models in a variety of contexts associated with the presence of exogenous shocks, with short or medium-long run perspective, and with the structural features of the economy as the degree of openess to foreing trade. Students will be also able to use these models in the study of problems in fields other than macroeconomics, specifically finance, insurance and demografy.
Course contents
INTRODUCTION TO MACROECONOMICS (Boitani, chap. 1 e 2; Blanchard edition 2009, only chap. 27; and Blanchard any of the last three editions)
The Story of Macroeconomics
National accounting
THE SHORT RUN
The Goods Market
Financial Markets
Goods and Financial Markets: The IS-LM Model
THE MEDIUM RUN
The Labor Market
Putting All Markets Together. The AS-AD Model.
The Natural Rate of Unemployment and The Phillips Curve
Inflation, Activity, and Nominal Money Growth
THE LONG RUN
The Facts of Growth
Saving, Capital Accumulation, and Output
Technological Progress and Growth
Technological Progress. The Short, the Medium, and the Long Run.
EXTENSIONS
EXPECTATIONS
Expectations: The Basic Tools
Financial Markets and Expectations
Expectations, Consumption, and Investment
Expectations, Output, and Policy
THE OPEN ECONOMY
Openness in Goods and Financial Markets
The Goods Market in an Open Economy
Output, the Interest Rate, and the Exchange Rate
Exchange Rate Regimes
PATHOLOGIES
High public debt
Teaching methods
Considering the high number of students, the class offers frontal lectures if this is allowed by the health situation; otherwise lectures/tutorials will take place only partly in presence, to allow anyway all the students to benefit the lectures online.
Lectures will take place trying, whenever possible, to listen to students’ comments on the subjects matter of the course, as well as their answers to questions posed from both students and the instructor. Lectures will tend to finish with discussing some exercises proposed in the previous lectures. Moreover, each week tutorials will be offered to complement the frontal lectures. These tutorials will discuss further exercises and problems posted one week in advance on KIRO. It is on schedule also a tutorial expressly tailored for working students.
Reccomended or required readings
Boitani, A., Macroeconomia, Il Mulino, 2008. Capitoli: 1 e 2.
Blanchard, O., Amighini, A., Giavazzi, F., Macroeconomia: una prospettiva europea, Il Mulino, 2011.
Capitoli: 3 – 21, or one of the last two editions.
Capitolo 27 dell'Edizione del 2009 del manuale di O.Blanchard, Macroeconomia.
Sustainable development goals - Agenda 2030