Economics

This course develops a fundamental understanding of the inherent dynamics of international management. It provides a comprehensive overview of the management decisions in the global environment and challenges students to analyze complex situations and develop recommendations for strategic decisions independently. Through the analysis of case studies, interactions with guest speakers, and an in-depth group project, the course offers a theoretical understanding of international management, but also a more practical application, analyzing best practices in management and frameworks as well as failures and lessons to be learned moving forward.

This course must be taken simultaneously with LABOR ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC POLICY A. This course explores how labor markets work and analyzes a wide range of labor issues within Japanese and US economies. Each class begins with the theoretical background of labor economics, then students analyze a related research article to understand how and whether the standard, neo-classical model is applied to real economic life.

This course examines current international economic topics including: purchasing power parity, inflation, economic inequality, the economic impact of environmental pollution, ESG investing, CSR (corporate social responsibility), speculative attacks, and international financial crises. 

This course covers sources of and obstacles to economic growth and development in Asian economies, focusing on the role of innovation, internationalization of firms, industrial clusters, institutions (including political institutions), and social capital. Each topic entails a review of basic theory and empirical evidence from growth theory, international economics, development economics, economic geography, economics of institutions, or network science; then an examination of Asian experiences. Classes consist of class discussions and presentations.  

This course teaches entrepreneurship both from the theoretical and practical perspectives. Alongside learning about and discussing an academic approach to entrepreneurship, students also go through experiential learning by working on an entrepreneurial project by working in small teams in search of a repeatable and scalable business model on which they report both orally and in written form. The course introduces business model generation tools such as the lean business model canvas, design thinking, and customer validation methods. The results of these methods culminate in a start-up pitch-deck, a Demo Day pitch event, and a concise report.

This course focuses on the principles of micro-economic analysis, particularly, the concept of economic rationality as it applies to individuals and firms, and the analysis of how price and quantity are set under different market structures. Moreover, students are introduced to topics addressed in more detail including the form of utility and production functions, and rational decision making and intertemporal choice in the face of uncertainty. Implications for the behavior and organization of firms is highlighted throughout. The course covers 5 topics: introduction to the concepts of market and economic rationality, consumer theory, market equilibrium, producer theory, and the concepts of externalities and public goods.

This course focuses on the economic issues of agriculture in developing countries. It looks at the structure and organization of agriculture in developing countries and the attendant problems for mechanization, the agricultural production function, pricing of agricultural inputs and outputs. The course also place special emphasis on technology adoption in agriculture.

This course examines the taxing and spending decisions of governments. After an introduction to welfare economics and the role of government in the economy, the course focuses on the revenue side of the budget: tax incidence, efficient and equitable taxation, the Australian system of revenue raising, issues of tax reform, and the theory and practice of public utility pricing. It then focuses on the expenditure side of the government budget: public goods, externalities, and programs aimed at redistribution. It also introduces techniques of policy evaluation.

This course introduces urban economics and covers fundamental principles developed in economics to understand the functioning/workings of an urban economy and the various aspects of urban life. The course begins with the definition of a city, why cities form by introducing the economics of agglomeration, and how cities interact to form the urban system of the entire economy. These factors affect all urban phenomena. The course then analyzes the internal spatial structure of a city by developing a theory of commuting, housing demand and housing production. It then analyzes transportation and land/housing issues in more detail. Finally, the course discusses the optimality of local public good provision and connects local public finance and housing markets with land taxation.  

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. This course focuses on advanced and comprehensive knowledge of the main, up-to-date econometric methods for the analysis of economic and financial time series data. In terms of inference techniques, emphasis is given to up-to-date bootstrap methods. The course discusses how to analyze the application of advanced econometric models to economic time series data, and how to implement and make use of proper (asymptotic and bootstrap) inference methods in dynamic environments. The course is divided into two parts: part I introduces stylized facts of financial time series and conditional volatility models including estimation, inference, and applications; and part II discusses asymptotic and Bootstrap inference in time series.