Course 2024-2025 a.y.

20978 - ECONOMICS PREPARATORY COURSE

Department of Economics

Course taught in English
Go to class group/s: 1
MM (I sem. - P) - DES-ESS (I sem. - P) - EMIT (I sem. - P)
Course Director:
MICHELA BRAGA

Classes: 1 (I sem.)
Instructors:
Class 1: TO BE DEFINED


Suggested background knowledge

Being a preparatory course, no previous background knowledge is required. Basic math concepts and graphs are used.

Mission & Content Summary

MISSION

This course is an introduction to economics and it aims at preparing students for the subsequent micro and macro founded courses of their MSc program. The preparatory course is a blended learning course, that is completely online. The course provides a basic introduction to the economics discipline, its main principles, and to the way of reasoning adopted by economists. It is divided into two modules, devoted respectively to Microeconomics and Macroeconomics. The micro part will provide a preliminary understanding of the choice theory. The focus will be on the behavior of consumers, firms and government. Perfect and imperfect markets will be analyzed. The macro part will discuss the basic analytical tools essential for the understanding of the current macroeconomic scenarios. In particular, the course will review the determinant of the main macro aggregates (GDP, unemployment, inflation, debt and deficits, consumption) enabling students to better understand the environment of reference for firms and institutions in modern economies.

CONTENT SUMMARY

MODULE 1: Microeconomics

·         The consumer: preferences, constraints, choices

·         The demand function

·         Elasticity

·         The firm: technology, input choice and costs

·         The supply function

·         The market equilibrium and policy interventions

·         The market power: monopoly, natural monopoly, oligopoly, monopolistic competition

·         The game theory: non cooperative games, sequential games, repeated games

·         The market imperfections: externalities and asymmetric information

·         Risk and uncertainty

 

MODULE 2: Macroeconomics

·       Introduction to macroeconomics: topics and methods

·       The macro context and its measurement: national accounting and GDP

·       The labor market, wages, and unemployment

·       The financial markets: money market, interest rate, monetary policy instruments 

·       The short run dynamic and the long run economic growth

·       The macro fluctuations: demand and supply shocks, stabilization policies

·       The trade off between inflation and unemployment: the Phillips curve

·       The global context: saving and investment, the exchange rate, trade policies

·       The Government and the macroeconomy

·       The intertemporal approach

·       The great recession and the pandemic crisis


Intended Learning Outcomes (ILO)

KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING

At the end of the course student will be able to...
  • Understand and follow more specific and advanced courses in economics and political economy
  • Understand how individual agents make their choices of consumption and production
  • Explain the functioning of the market
  • Identify different market structures
  • Discuss how imperfections affect the outcome of the markets
  • Distinguish different sources of economic inefficiency.
  • Understand how macro aggregates are defined, measured and determined
  • Explain the effects of shocks hitting the economy
  • Recognize the role of Governments and Central Banks' policies in the business cycle
  • Discuss which elements make macro deficits sustainable or unsustainable

APPLYING KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING

At the end of the course student will be able to...
  • Demonstrate familiarity with fundamental concepts in microeconomics and macroeconomics
  • Use the basic micro and macro economics models to describe the economy
  • Design regulatory interventions to achieve desirable market outcomes.
  • Understand the short and long-run fluctuations of the economy
  • Evaluate the effect of policy announcements and interventions on the main macro variables
  • Compare the performance of different economies

Teaching methods

  • Lectures

DETAILS

  • Online lectures on the Bboard teaching platform

  • The course is structured into online asynchronous classes on different modules. Ex ante self-evaluation tests are available for each module to determine whether the student's knowledge on the topics is sufficient to skip the module. If the ex ante test is not passed, students are warmly encouraged to improve their knowledge using the provided material. A final ex post self-evaluation test can be taken to verify the improvements.

  • Students can contact the teacher for clarifications on specific topics and discuss their doubts.


Assessment methods

  Continuous assessment Partial exams General exam
  • Written individual exam (traditional/online)
     x
  • This course is not mandatory and we will not assess student learning
 x    

ATTENDING AND NOT ATTENDING STUDENTS

This course is not mandatory and we will not assess student learning. However, self assessment through on line quizzes will be provided.


Teaching materials


ATTENDING AND NOT ATTENDING STUDENTS

§  Teaching material will be available on Bboard 

Some suggested possible textbooks are:

MICRO MODULE

§  B. DOUGLAS BERMHEI, D. WHINSTON, Microeconomics, ISBN : 9781307298048

§ H. VARIAN Intermediate Microeconomics with Calculus. International Student Edition. 

MACRO MODULE

§  C.I. JONES, Macroeconomics, W.W. Norton & Company Ltd., 5th international edition.  EAN: 9780393417333

§  O. BLANCHARD, A. AMIGHINI, F. GIAVAZZI, Macroeconomics - A European Perspective, Pearson Education Limited, 2021, 4th Edition.

Last change 27/05/2024 17:29