University of Commerce Luigi Bocconi

This course covers key features and key processes of strategic management of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), about main characteristics of SMEs, including those owned and run by families (small and medium family businesses), and about factors and decisions impacting SMEs' sustainable competitive advantage. Through multiple cases, examples and guest speakers sessions, students develop a comprehensive knowledge about strategic decision making for small or medium businesses, with a focus on international and digital growth strategies. Prerequisites: prior knowledge of key concepts, terminology and frameworks of general management.

This course introduces students to more advanced topics in Probability Theory and Statistical Inference. The first part is devoted to investigating mathematical aspects of probability, with a special emphasis on multivariate distributions and limiting theorems. In the second part, students are guided through the methodological core of point estimation (both from a frequentist and Bayesian perspective) and hypothesis testing. These theoretical aspects are complemented by an in-depth presentation of elementary simulation and computational techniques that are routinely used within most popular statistical procedures. Prerequisites: Solid knowledge of calculus and of basic programming tools in R. 

This course provides real world, experience-based learning on what it's like to actually start a new business. The main objective is to allow students to directly experience the earliest phases of an entrepreneurial startup process. The focus is on concept building and testing. Students are asked to actively engage in developing the initial business idea, but also in talking to potential customers, suppliers, partners, and competitors, as they confront the chaos and uncertainty of how a real startup actually emerges from the entrepreneurs' efforts.

This course is designed to be a broad introduction to the field of sociology. Students encounter some of the most influential theories developed, imagined and used by sociologists to make sense of the social world. We discuss and acquire familiarity with the concepts sociologists typically use in their work, and with some of the core methods sociologists employ to investigate the social world. For instance, students gain an understanding of what sociologists mean when they talk about culture, socialization and social structure, and how sociologists analyse these concepts linking theory and empirical analyses. The course also encourages students to think critically (i.e. as a social scientist, about human life and societies and develop their own questions about social life). Finally, the course pays particular attention to the broad themes of inequality as it pertains to race, class and gender, and the social changes it brought about, as well as family changes, by adopting a life course perspective. 

The course is divided in two parts. The first part of the course focuses on the concept of security applied to different sectors and case studies. Human security, food security, migration, health security, environmental security, and the protection of cultural heritage in conflict zones are analyzed through the prism of political theory and critical security studies, based on contemporary case studies. The main objective of this module is to enable students to develop analytical and critical skills in the field of security studies. The second part focuses on exploring key phenomena of cooperation and conflict among and within states and their determinants, such as inter and intra-state wars, terrorism, military alliances, and military coups, adopting a strictly quantitative perspective. 

The course provides students with the conceptual and theoretical framework surrounding valuation issues and the practical tools to address such topics in real-life situations. The main methodologies of corporate valuation are analyzed and the approaches commonly used by practitioners (financial analysts, investment and merchant banks, consulting firms) are critically discussed. Examples focus on corporate valuation issues using DCF, stock market and deal multiples completed by industry-specific as well as case-specific valuation techniques. Prerequisites: knowledge of basic financial accounting and basic corporate finance.

Social media is an important part of our everyday lives, for better or worse. It has the power to bring people together but also to threaten democracy. This course looks at social media through an economics lens, analyzing how it shapes the incentives of users, platforms, firms, news organizations, politicians, and governments. To do so, it reviews basic models of individual and firm behavior, borrowing tools from the most “rational” economic frameworks but also covering important psychological biases from the behavioral economics literature. Armed with this toolkit, the course reviews frontier empirical literature, studying questions such as: How can we incentivize the production of “good” content and mitigate harmful content? Are the incentives of platforms aligned with users’ interests? What are the consequences of social media algorithms optimizing for engagement? Do algorithms cause echo chambers? What are the political effects of social media? Does it harm users? This course contributes to the education program by showcasing how to apply economic knowledge to answer some of the most pressing challenges in our society.