BERGAMO
Overview
Date/time interval
Syllabus
Course Objectives
This course aims to provide students with key interpretative and methological instruments, in order to enable them to critically examine the evolution of the economic theory from Mercantilism to the second half of the XX century. To this aim it draws on and critically reexamines several topics and analytical tools of Microeconomics and Macroeconomics taking into account the historical and institutional framework in which these were elaborated. It also analyses the complex interactions between economic theory, "facts" and economic policy choices. In this perspective, special attention will be paid to the problem of economic inequality.
Course Prerequisites
Please consult the programme website for the compulsory propaedeutics required: https://lt-eco.unibg.it/it/node/119
Teaching Methods
Teaching will take the form of lectures and will be highly interactive. Students will be encouraged during the lectures to contribute with proposals for further investigation and debate.
Assessment Methods
The final exam will be written, 60 minutes . The written exam will consist of some open questions and it will be marked out of thirty. The procedure and content of the exam will be the same for both attending and non-attending students
Contents
Francois Quesnay: social classes in a rich agricultural kingdom
Adam Smith: the progress of prosperity and an implicit theory of income distribution
David Ricardo and the non-incompatibility of equity and efficiency
Thomas Malthus and the challenge of population growth
John Stuart Mill and the social sense of justice
Karl Marx: the fall in the profit rate but a steady pressure on labor incomes
Vilfredo Pareto: from classes to individuals
Knut Wicksell: interest rate and the business cycle
Joseph Alois Schumpeter: the effects of innovation on income distribution
John Maynard Keynes and the Cambridge "school": from effective demand to balanced growth
Piero Sraffa and the “independent variable” wage
Simon Kuznetz: inequality during modernization
The long eclipse of inequality studies during the Cold War
Online Resources
More information
READING LIST
Branko Milanovic (2023), Visioni della disuguaglianza, Laterza.
Core project (2018), L'economia, https://www.core-econ.org/the-economy/v1/book/it/text/0-3-contents.html
Nicholas Kaldor (1971), Teorie alternative della distribuzione, in Valore, prezzi e equilibrio generale, a cura di G. Lunghini, Il Mulino, pp. 293-295.
Luigi Pasinetti (1977), Sviluppo economico e distribuzione del reddito, Il Mulino.
Ernesto Screpanti (1981), Teorie della distribuzione del reddito, Etas.
Marcello Messori (2002), Credit and Money in Schumpeter's Theory, https://art.torvergata.it/retrieve/e291c0d3-69b8-cddb-e053-3a05fe0aa144/169.pdf