Economics

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. This is an applied course on international development economics, organized around a few selected topics. The course offers the theoretical and analytical tools is to understand the different interpretations of social and economic development - in its evolving features - both at the country and at the international level. With the objective of providing the basic context for correctly framing the Sustainable Development Goals, the course focuses on issues such as poverty, hunger, inequality, migration, and unbalanced development. The experience of the so-called emerging countries is one of the points of view. Students acquire the ability to tackle the problems of economic development and competition in an applied and comparative perspective, with thematic in-depth applications.

This is an advanced and critical course on issues of international development in light of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The course covers the following topics, analyzing and comparing different positions: Poverty definitions and measures; Poverty statistical evidence; Economic inequality definitions and measures; The Kuznets curve relationship between income growth and inequality; The debate after Kuznets; World inequality recent trends; Inequality in income and wealth in the long run; World inequality recent trends; Climate change and development: who and what is causing it, climate change inequality; Assessing the consequences of climate change; How has the world economic order changed in the last two centuries; Where is the world heading: globalization and the current international economic order; International relations, the economic order and the new geography of world economic power.

This course examines the major achievements of behavioral economics focusing on theory and empirical evidence, and introduces policy design and evaluation based on insights into human behavior changes.  

Unlike traditional economics, which understands human decision-making and behavioral changes based on the assumption of human rationality and standard preferences, behavioral economics has broadened its scope to expand human decision-making models and develop new policy tools to induce behavioral changes based on the incorporation of recent studies and contributions of psychology and other fields.  

Students explore these new interpretations and learn about recent applications and newly defined understanding of human beings and their economic behavior. 

Students who wish to take this course are required to have an appropriate level of knowledge of microeconomics and economic statistics. 

The course looks at economic theories and the process of integration, with a focus on European integration. The first part of the course examines various trade policy measures, their economic effects and the role of the WTO in multilateral liberalization, and international integration. Emphasis is put on current WTO issues and the challenges faced by the future trade system. The second part of the course looks at economic theories aimed at explaining the purpose and the effects of regional integration. This part focuses on the factors that impact on the economic effects of regional integration as well as on policies that are of importance for the integration process. Emphasis is put on the various types of regional integration, various forms of market structure and competition policy. The third part studies the process of multilateral trade liberalization within the framework of the WTO. Special emphasis is placed on current WTO issues and the challenges of the future multilateral trade system. Here, the regional dimension of economic integration is also examined.

This course covers the foundations, principles, importance and guidelines of financial planning for life goals, the uses of financial instruments, together with self-discovery techniques, financial planning techniques including how to earn, collect, use and invest money, savings allocation and DCA investment techniques, debt management techniques, savings increase techniques, personal income tax saving planning techniques as well as the principles and importance of the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy in Thai society.

This course explores how the healthcare services market differs from other markets by examining the characteristics of demand and supply in healthcare services from an economic viewpoint. Additionally, the course covers the role of health insurance in mitigating uncertainty and risk inherent in health and examines its impact on the demand, supply, and pricing of healthcare services. Furthermore, the course addresses various issues such as information asymmetry, problems like moral hazard and induced demand, behavioral economic approaches, the significance of medical technology advancements, the long-term effects of health and medical disparities, and responses to infectious disease crises, aiming to find implications for building an efficient future healthcare system.  

Topics include problems faced by the Korean healthcare system, theories of healthcare service demand, Health production functions and healthcare service productivity, Theory of health insurance demand and the impact of health insurance on healthcare service demand, Comparison of Korea's health insurance system with those of other countries, Latest theories and empirical studies on moral hazard, Information asymmetry issues in healthcare service supply, Impact of payment systems on demand and supply, Future of healthcare supply with advancements in medical technology.

This course communicates the key concepts in modern corporate finance in explaining how corporations make financial decisions, focusing on investment decision (decision to purchase real assets) and financing decision (decision on how to finance this investment). Corporations make these decisions towards fulfilling the financial goal of the corporation, which is maximizing shareholder value. This course therefore covers some computation techniques to value corporations and investments. This course also considers how these financial decisions could be affected by the market, social, and legal environments. Additionally, the course covers the topics of mergers and sustainable corporate finance.

This third year course focuses on using economic principles and management science to tackle real world business decisions. Students apply the concepts and tools learned in previous courses covering statistics, microeconomics, spreadsheet modeling and quantitative methods, to put them into practice through real-world examples with a global perspective.

This course examines the unique political economy of the United States in drawing primarily—but not exclusively—on comparative political economy (CPE) scholarship to explore how the American economy functions, how it compares to its (mainly European) peers, and why it remains so. The course consists of three interconnected main parts. The first part discusses the basic logic behind the comparative analysis of capitalism and trace the ideational roots of contemporary approaches in comparative political economy, providing a foundational understanding of key debates in CPE. The second and third part of the seminar are dedicated to the dominant theoretical frameworks for the comparative analysis of capitalism in the last decades, with a particular focus on the United States. By integrating theoretical perspectives with in-depth comparative analysis, this course equips students with the tools to critically assess the evolution of the American model of capitalism, engage critically with contemporary economic challenges, and understand how national political economies mediate and respond to the global forces shaping today’s capitalism.

The course provides students with a solid understanding of how the economy functions at the aggregate level, equipping them with the analytical tools needed to interpret and evaluate macroeconomic conditions and policy decisions. By combining theoretical frameworks with real-world applications, the course develops students' ability to analyze contemporary macroeconomic developments from both national and international perspectives. Particular emphasis is placed on the role and effectiveness of fiscal, monetary, structural, and trade policies in addressing macroeconomic challenges, stabilizing economic fluctuations and fostering sustainable growth. The course strengthens students’ capacity to critically assess macroeconomic policies and their broader implications, skills essential for careers in economics, policymaking, finance, and international business. Prerequisites: The knowledge of the basic concepts covered in an introductory Microeconomics course is strongly recommended. The course also makes regular use of elementary mathematical tools and graphical analysis.

This course examines how the market price is set and how market failure occurs as well as how the government can improve market performance. It is recommended for students who have taken Microeconomics and are interested in further studies of oligopoly behavior and competition policy. 

The real market is often in the form of monopolistic competition, oligopoly, and monopoly rather than ideal perfect competition. In such cases, the main task of industrial organization theory is to clarify how market prices and transaction volumes are determined, what are the problems at that time, and what fair trade policies can improve market performance.  

This course is for those who are interested in market organization as a student of microeconomic theory, and it examines the relationship between market structure and firms’ behavior and consumer welfare as well as the strategic interactions between and among firms and consumers. Our quest is for the simplest model or the smallest family of models capable of clarifying important policy issues such as collusion, predation, entry, price discrimination, vertical integration, and patent protection. 

Prerequisite: Microeconomics; it may also be helpful to have a foundation in game theory as an analysis tool.