Italy

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. The course is separated into two parts. The first part is on an introduction to Phoenician and Punic Archaeology. Topics in this part include: the identity of Phoenicians and Punics between history, microhistory and archaeology; relations with the substrata in the contexts of expansion; and commercial contacts and cultural exchanges with the great civilizations of the ancient Near East and the pre-Roman Mediterranean. The second part is on the archaeology of production and material culture from the Phoenician East to the Punic Mediterranean. This part of the course examines the archaeological data relating to various expressions of Phoenician and Punic material culture, analyzing the different evidence of production chains that can be traced between the Syrian-Palestinian coast and the central-western Mediterranean, from the end of the Bronze Age to Romanization. In particular, starting from the study of each single handcraft productions, the technological aspects of the various materials examined are explored, as well as the issue of the contexts of supply of raw matters. Students interested in participating in archaeological excavations are required to complete the safety course for archaeological sites.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students interested in International Law. The three fundamental legal functions on which the legal dynamics of the international community is founded – law-making, law-determination and law-enforcement – are analyzed within the contemporary social context. International law is presented in its different dimensions: as a tool in the hand of international actors able to handle change in the international society and safeguard stability and predictability of international legal relations; as common language useful in reaching consensus or, at least, peaceful disagreement; and as key to understanding the reality of contemporary international relations. Bringing together different perspectives, the course demonstrates how international rules, while made by governments and mostly addressed to them, can be of great relevance to private actors and to their interests.

The course focuses on the major turning points in Italian economic history, in which business management groups emerged. The course provides a chronological and thematic analysis of the historical-economic events in Italy, from its unification to present day, together with the analysis of various case studies selected from the most interesting successes and failures of Italian private and public companies in today's global economy.

This course examines the performance and operation of imperfectly competitive markets, as well as the behavior of firms in these markets. The course looks at the effects of various business decisions and policy actions on the way firms compete. The course also explores how the need to motivate members of an organization and to coordinate their actions shapes the provision of incentives within the organization and the actual organization design. This allows a look at how organizational choices affect firms’ competitive behavior and rivals’ reactions. The course discusses topics including a review of fundamental concepts of game theory; the determinants of market power in static oligopolistic models; strategic positioning and advertising; the intensity of rivalry in dynamic oligopolistic models: collusive agreements; strategic and non-strategic barriers to entry; incentives within an organization: motivation; incentives within an organization: externalities and transfer prices; the strategic effects of organizational choices: horizontal mergers; and anti-trust intervention in oligopolistic markets. Students attending this course should be familiar with basic microeconomics concepts, in particular with the notion of Nash Equilibrium and Subgame Perfect Nash Equilibrium, with basic oligopolistic models (such as Bertrand and Cournot models of static competition) and with the fundamentals of unconstrained and constrained optimization problems.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. The course examines the history and the contemporary use of Geopolitics in order to critically examine the political geographies of European imperialism, cold war, and post-cold war geopolitics, and the contemporary geopolitical landscapes. In particular, questions of borders, migrations, and biopolitics are discussed in relation to the making of the European Self and its associated geographies. The postcolonial and the decolonial are also presented by taking into consideration a geographical perspective.

Exploring Rome is divided into two components: language instruction (mostly in class), and a culture component (mostly on-site). The course is structured for exposure to the language and the opportunity to engage directly with Italian culture. The language component of the course provides the tools and skills to navigate the city and complete tasks in real-life situations and specific contexts. Through small group work, the course builds basic communicative structures to react effectively to authentic communicative situations. The culture component of the course investigates different aspects of Italian life by making Rome its classroom. Onsite lectures complement and contextualize the language component by studying the city’s history, its traditions, and current events in situ.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is generally restricted to local graduate level students and requires the instructor's direct permission to enroll. Enrollment by special permission only. This course offers an introduction to management consulting. A particular focus of the is given to the role of consultants in the strategic decision making of firms, to the management tools used by management consulting firms, to the methodology for the of top management decision making. At the end of the course, participants have a methodical approach to managerial problem solving in a business company. The course discusses topics including: development of a real business case to be solved in teams; management consulting toolbox; principles of management consulting written and oral communication; M&A; and digital transformation.

How investors make decisions is determined by human emotion, biases, and cognitive limitations of the mind in processing and responding to information. This course looks at behavioral finance (how investors and markets behave) and experimental finance (principles of designing experiments in finance). It investigates and uses hands-on experiments for the following current topics and applications: nudging; explaining trading behavior (including the role of subjective expectations, overconfidence, risk appetite, emotions, and attention); exploring market bubbles; understanding bank runs (investigating causes, contagions, and preventions); finding the optimal financial communication to clients; and testing the value of financial advice.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. The course is centered on the relationships between Italian Literature and Visual Culture, from the second half of the twentieth century to the first decade of the new millennium, with a focus on photography, graphic novel, advertising, cinema, television, and videogames. Special attention is placed on the identification and analysis of the interactions between the different languages and their contextualization in Italy’s contemporary cultural environment. Course topics change yearly. The 2023 topic is: A Transmedia Longseller: IL NOME DELLA ROSA (THE NAME OF THE ROSE) by Umberto Eco.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. The course introduces solution algorithms for nonlinear optimization problems that are the basis of many machine learning tools which find applications in telecommunications, electronics, automatic control, and decision support systems. The course is divided into two modules. The first module introduces solution algorithms for nonlinear optimization problems. Topics in this section include: nonlinear optimization: introduction to mathematical programming, models, and algorithms; nonlinear models: unconstrained optimization and constrained optimization; relaxations and penalty algorithms; convex optimization: Lagrangian relaxation and barrier algorithm; and applications of convex optimization to support vector machine and deep learning. The second module introduces basic machine learning techniques for classification and learning. Topics in this section include: algorithms for clustering and classification; neural networks; and laboratory activity on applications for machine learning algorithms arising in real applications.