The course aims at providing students with the main concepts and tools of economic analysis, both at the micro and at the macro level. By the end of the course, the student:
- will have constructed a general framework of the relations among agents within the economic system;
- will have analyzed in detail the principles behind individuals' consumption choices and firms' production choices;
- will have acquired the knowledge of the conceptual tools necessary to identify and analyze the main forms of market competition and the policies to intervene in specific markets;
- will have learnt the definitions of the main aggregates of national income accounting and their relations;
- will be able to refer to a range of macroeconomic models in order to understand, at least broadly, the main economic policy problems.
None.
Lectures
The exam is written and partly composed of multiple choice questions and partly of open questions, which may require the solution of exercises. The criteria for the grades will take into account the difference between open questions and multiple choice questions.
Microeconomics: Basic concepts. Optimization. Demand, supply, equilibrium. Consumers and incentives. Firms and incentives. Perfect competition. International trade. Externalities and public goods. The State in the economy: taxes and regulation. Factors of production. Monopoly. Game theory. Oligopoly.
Macroeconomics: Macroeconomic aggregates. Aggregate income. Economic growth. Employment and unemployment. Credit markets. The monetary system. Short-term economic fluctuations. Countercyclical macroeconomic policy.
