Economics

This course is a study of the macroeconomic functions of global finance and the international economy. Topics include: national income and balance of payments; exchange rates and the foreign exchange market; money and interest rates; international monetary systems; financial globalization; and the growth, crisis, and reform of developing economies.

Game theory is a formal language to describe situations in which each agent's decision affects other agents' well-being. Games can be used to analyze a very broad range of economic, social, and political interactions. The main objective of the class is to present all key concepts of game theory (players, strategies, solution concepts etc.), and apply them. The course is self-contained and does not require any previous knowledge in game theory. The class also incorporates behavioral considerations that help better understand what agents actually do or should do. The methodology of controlled experiments in economics is presented, and recent experiments discussed.

This course illustrates how Operations and Supply Chain Management can be managed to properly deal with health, social, and environmental issues and how to transform such a challenge into a source of competitive advantage. The course focuses on specific topics related to the Triple Bottom Line and to the Circular Economy paradigms, by linking sustainability concepts with the product life cycle, from its design, manufacturing, distribution, and possible end-of-life recovery options. The teaching style of this course is consistent with its learning goals and is based on case discussions, group work, real examples, and on the interactions with guest speakers from companies that are coping with these issues. During the course, topics are analyzed moving from real-life case-histories, so as to make the students aware not only of the technicalities related to sustainability in Operations and Supply Chain Management, but also of the most valuable experiences of companies and of industries that are leading the process toward a more sustainable operating system. Topics covered include: mega trends and competitiveness; synergies between profits and sustainable practices in Operations Management; design for environment; sustainability and vendor selection; sustainability and production; lean management and six-sigma; sustainable logistics, transportation, and packaging; reverse logistics and closed-loop supply chains; sustainability and performance measurement.

The course presents the structure of European and US financial markets and discusses the rules and principles that govern trading and price formation in the most advanced electronic trading platforms and auction markets. The course discusses how to trade securities on electronic order book markets like the London Stock Exchange, Borsa Italiana, Nyse-Euronext, NASDAQ, NYSE, or alternative trading systems (lit and dark pools). During the course, students participate in a trading simulation game prepared to practice real-time trading in the market. The course covers: market microstructure and research objectives, trading process, continuous vs batch auction, orders and order properties, market participants and the role of market makers, market structure, trading sessions (call and continuous auction markets), execution systems (order-driven, quote-driven, and hybrid markets), trading rules for order driven markets, price formation, matching rules, guidelines for price monitoring, price discovery, circuit breakers and market crashes, pricing and trading fees (make-take vs symmetric pricing structure), algorithmic trading, and high frequency trading (HFT), regulatory debate (U.S. and Europe) on dark liquidity, tick size, trading fees, and closing auction volume.

Modern capitalist market economy is an extremely powerful instrument to create wealth and to satisfy human demands – and to exploit, alienate, and destroy the very societies it is supposed to serve. How can it be made moral? There are quite a number of ways: for example through deliberate lawmaking, responsible research and development (e.g. technology assessment), through enlightened consumer choices, and sustainable use of human and natural capital assets. But they often come at a high cost and involve more fundamental questions: How can politicians and lawmakers regulate the market for the common good without suffocating it? How can big corporations and tech companies continue to deliver innovative services without monopolizing the market and dominating their customers? What does a fair distribution of income look like? How do we assign value to natural and social goods (like clean air or low crime rates) and how do we measure sustainable welfare beyond traditional economic growth? How can consumers harness their own power to make informed choices and act in accordance with their values? Are digital business models based on artificial intelligence and machine learning threatening the autonomy of consumer choice? What does corporate social responsibility look like in times of crisis? These and other questions are not only of interest to economists and business people but are relevant to all economic agents (individuals, companies, state institutions, etc.). To answer these questions, the course equips participants with key ethical approaches to economic behavior (virtue ethics, religious teachings, deontology, utilitarianism, master morality, neo-liberalism), approaches which have been or still are dominating ethical discourses on economic behavior.

The course covers the real part of trade theory. It is a formal analysis of the reasons for international trade, the way different parties gain or lose from trade, and what can be done about that through trade policy. The subject matter is theoretical in nature, but the theory is illustrated using real life examples and cases.