Economic policy

1. Knowledge and understanding: The course aims to analyze the economic policy objectives of allocative efficiency, income redistribution and macroeconomic stabilization in a national and international context, with particular reference to the European context. The analysis will be carried out with both a positive and a normative approach aimed at underlining the importance of different ideologies in choosing both the priorities in the objectives to be pursued and the intervention (or non-intervention) tools to pursue them. The student will be asked to acquire the contents proposed in the course and to develop his/her own understanding, also through deductive reasoning that allows him/her to use the theoretical reference frameworks as a possible interpretative key of the most recent economic policy issues.

2. Applying knowledge and understanding: The student must be able to use the acquired knowledge in order to establish criteria underlying economic choices, also with reference to priorities among different policy objectives, as well as to compare and evaluate the tools to be used on the basis of their different ideological connotations and effectiveness. The analysis of actual examples will be carried out with the aid of appropriate quantitative data and indicators drawn from statistics and official documents. This approach will allow to verify the skills acquired by the student in the interpretation of quantitative data for the description of socio-economic phenomena, which can be interpreted, within this discipline, as the ability to "know how".

3. Making judgments: Economic policy is a social science and as such the priority in achieving the objectives, the choices made, as well as its role can be evaluated differently depending on the theoretical approach that is adopted. The student must be able to acquire the awareness that the different policy solutions proposed respond to different theoretical approaches (sometimes even different in ideology) and must therefore develop critical skills and autonomy of judgment in the resolution of the concrete cases proposed. The acquisition of critical skills and independent judgment must be developed by stimulating participation in the classroom.

4. Communication skills: The course has among its main objectives also that of letting students acquire an appropriate technical and economic language that can be a useful communication and presentation tool in his/her professional life. Students will have to be able to identify the determinants of main economic phenomena on which economic policy is questioned (market failures, inflation, unemployment, public debt, foreign debt, economic growth) and to transmit the knowledge acquired in both written and oral form. Possibly. seminars on the topics of the course, held by experts from the academic world or other institutional figures, will support the growth of students' ability to interact and study.

5. Learning skills: The student's learning ability will be built precisely during the course, learning to manage the economic concepts that are the subject of political decisions, understanding their timing and meaning, in the light of the models studied.

Economic policy and conflict. The normative theory of economic policy. The foundations of the welfare economy. Interventions for the correction of microeconomic failures: externalities and informative asymmetries.

Regimes of macroeconomic imbalance. The level of aggregate income in the basic models for macroeconomic analysis. Fiscal policy. Fiscal policy in the Eurozone.

Regulatory interventions in the presence of microeconomic market failures: market power and antitrust policies.

Income distribution and social welfare. Welfare State: pension systems. Money and monetary policy. Monetary policy in the Eurozone.

Inflation and anti-inflationary policies. Deflation. The Phillips curve. Growth and development policies.

The balance of payments and exchange rates. The effects of macroeconomic policies in an open economy: the IS-LM-BP model. The EU integration process: main European institutions and economic policies. Economic policy in the era of globalization.

To sit the exam it is necessary to register within 5 days from the date of the exam.

The exam consists of a written test (lasting 1 hour) and an oral test.

The written test will consist of open-ended questions that may require algebraic and graphic solutions, always accompanied by appropriate comments. Written tests are aimed at evaluating: the knowledge of the discipline by the examiner; their ability to use adequate technical language; the ability of critical analysis; the ability to apply and make the appropriate connections between the different parts of the program in order to develop an overall vision of the discipline.

The oral test is aimed at verifying the mastery of the topics covered also in the written test, the ability to speak the topics in the program and the ability to connect between the various topics.

In case of pandemic restrictions, changes may be made to the verification method.