Italy

This course provides students with a sound basis for communicating effectively and accurately in oral and written Italian. Authentic materials (songs, videos, advertisements, and film clips) are used in a communicative-based approach, and emphasis is placed on the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Students participate on field trips take them outside the classroom to engage with the city and Romans to reinforce their skills. The course is conducted entirely in Italian.

This course provides an advanced understanding of the python programming language and its main features through various applications in many fields. Students use procedural and object-oriented programming language concepts in real programs; combine programming techniques to solve problems of varying degrees of difficulty in applied fields; find and understand programming language documentation to learn new information needed to solve programming problems; and implement problem solving strategies. Course topics include input/output in Python, classes, databases management with Python, computer simulations, and agent-based modeling. Prerequisites: an introductory course on python programming or similar language (e.g. Java, C, etc.).

In this Italian language CEFR A1 level course, students learn to understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases aimed at the satisfaction of needs of a concrete type. Students learn how to introduce themselves and others, and to ask and answer questions about personal details such as where they live, people they know, and things they have. The course will review communicative functions including: introducing oneself and saying and asking for personal information; greeting and answering greetings; saying thanks and replying; apologizing and replying to apologies; looking for, asking, and giving information in daily university student life; expressing one’s tastes, needs (physical and non), and interests; asking and saying the time; asking and saying the date; giving and understanding simple instructions; identifying and briefly describing people, objects, and places; asking and understanding information about the Italian language (What's the Italian for "x," How do you spell "x,” What does "x" mean?); and being formal and informal. Topics and vocabular include introducing people, relatives, and friends; description of places and people; study and work; shopping; and food.

Public institutions and non-profit organizations play a fundamental role in today's economic systems as policy designers, public service-providers, grant-makers, and advocates of unmet ever-changing human needs. As their goals are different from those pursued by business companies, managers working in these organizations perform different tasks, follow different logic and must develop different skills. At the end of this course students understand these differences, are able to assess how successful public/nonprofit managers behave, are aware about which mistakes to avoid, and apply this learning to perform basic tasks connected to the overall creation of public value that public/non-profit organizations produce for their communities. The course is divided into 2 parts. Part 1: Public policy and public management (governments and their structure; role of bureaucracies; types of bureaucrats and how to motivate them; decision-making and performance evaluation in public agencies). Part 2: Non-profit management (role of the third sector in the economy; types of non-profit organizations: an overview; governance and management of non-profit organizations; how to secure contributed income: key successful factors in fundraising).

The main objective of this course is twofold: to provide a wide perspective of Intercultural dialogue through the Human Rights lens, and to bridge the gap between the theoretical framework and the design, implementation, and evaluation of concrete interventions. The course contributes to building intercultural competences (knowledge and practical skills) respectful of human rights and facilitates the work of psychologists with both individuals and the community in a multicultural setting. The course reviews definitions and general principles including what are human rights, what is intercultural dialogue, what is their relationship; from moral claims to international human rights law; intercultural dialogue – pre-conditions: democracy, rule of law, and equal enjoyment of rights; conditions conducive to intercultural dialogue: respect for human dignity, non-discrimination, promotion of equal opportunities, and adoption of positive measures; and human rights related to intercultural dialogue: freedom of conscience and religion, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and right to respect for private life. The course discusses managing intercultural dialogue and diversity through topics including intercultural dialogue actors: the state, local authorities, civil society, minority groups, cultural institutions, the education and health sectors, private sector, media, etc. The course explores balancing diversity and unity trough intercultural dialogue including avoiding assimilation; avoiding cultural relativism; addressing discrimination and countering hate speech; protecting vulnerable groups; and psychological assistance to victims of discrimination, harassment, hate, and violence (hate speech and hate crime, including violence against women and domestic violence). The course examines case studies and best practices including the wearing of religious symbols in public areas; immigrants and the hosting society: intercultural integration as a two-sided process; freedom of expression vs prohibition of hate speech; domestic violence and violence against women: the so-called honor crimes; parental wishes in matters concerning the raising and education of their children vs the child best interest; and the notion of gender vs the notion of sex.

This course provides: (i) a working knowledge of the most important aspects of the linear regression model; and (ii) basic tools needed to understand and critically interpret empirical research conducted by others as well as to plan and conduct empirical analyses using economic data. The key concepts of the underlying statistical theory are covered, but major emphasis is placed on application of the theory from a practical standpoint. The course also provides an introduction on how to conduct empirical analysis of economic data using Stata, a statistical software package. Prerequisites: Sound knowledge of mathematics and statistics.

This course aims at providing the basic theoretical and applied tools for a rigorous statistical analysis. Specifically, the course focuses on techniques to summarize and visualize data of different types and their possible relations, as well as on basic sampling and inferential procedures, and on the assessment of the risk associated to extrapolation and inference. In particular, students learn how to extract information from data and how to assess the reliability of such information. The course covers the following topics: collection, management, and summary of data using frequency distributions, graphical representations, and summaries; study of the relationship between two variables; statistical inference and sampling variability; theory of point estimation and confidence intervals; hypothesis testing; and simple and multiple regression models. All the descriptive and inferential tools introduced during the course are applied to data using the statistical software R - and in particular the integrated development environment (IDE) RStudio. Prerequisites: understanding of the concepts of probability theory and random variables.

This course is an introduction to labor economics. The course objective is to understand how labor markets operate and how they are affected by institutions and labor market policies. Both empirical evidence and standard theory are covered. The course highlights the effects on efficiency and the redistributive properties of institutions operating in imperfect labor markets, subject to market failures. This provides three reasons for the existence of institutions: i) remedying market failures, ii) achieving some redistribution, and iii) remedying potential negative side effects of other institutions. The course consists of 14 key lectures. The first lecture set up the stage by introducing workers’ labor supply, firms' labor demand, the labor market equilibrium and the institutional wedges. Lecture 2 through 14 deal with specific institutions and have the same setup: a description of the institution, some cross-country comparisons, theory in perfect and imperfect labor markets, empirical evidence on the effects of this institution, interactions with other institutions, and policy issues. The four lecture topics are: overview; minimum wages; unions and collective bargaining; antidiscrimination legislation; regulation of working hours; early retirement plans; family policies; education and training; migration policies; employment protection legislation; regulations on self-employment; unemployment benefits and active labor market policies; health related labor policies; and payroll taxes.

The course develops students’ skills in understanding, analyzing, and interpreting financial statements. Conceptually, the course emphasizes that producers and users of financial statements have different objectives and informational needs. At the same time, the course is applied in that it teaches students how to analyze actual financial statements data to make informed business decisions and assessments. The course is designed to broaden and deepen students’ conceptual and technical understanding of accounting as it is used for management purposes. The emphasis in the course is on financial controls, which provides the dominant form of control in the vast majority of decentralized organizations. This module provides support in business decisions, evaluation of organizational performance, or in evaluation of others (and/or be evaluated) through the use of financial and non-financial information. Course topics include understanding financial statements; fundamental analysis; growth strategy and financial tensions: the logic behind target setting; market based measures, ESG, and integrated reporting; management and control; financial responsibility; incentive systems; remedy to the myopia problem; and uncontrollable factors.

This course provides a comprehensive understanding of psychoanalytic theory, including the structural model, object relations theory, and self-psychology. The course develops knowledge of psychic conflict, unconscious processes, and the interpretation of dreams. The course provides skills in understanding transference and countertransference and analyzing contemporary applications of psychoanalysis. The course includes an introduction to psychoanalysis including an overview of psychanalytic model and its historical development. The course reviews the Topographic model including an analysis of unconscious processes and their influence on thoughts, emotions, and behavior; working on dreams; and the Oedipus Complex. The course discusses the Structural model including an understanding the structure of the mind, including the id, ego, and superego, and the stages of psychosexual development; psychic conflict and compromise; and an introduction to defense mechanisms and their role in psychological processes. The course reviews the object relations theory including an introduction to object relations theory and its contribution to psychoanalytic understanding, and an analysis of the role of attachment, separation-individuation processes. The course also discusses self-psychology and narcissistic personality with a focus on Heinz Kohut perspective, and the contemporary application of psychoanalysis, and its use in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) field.