Economics

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. This course aims to study classic topics in Public Economics and Policy, including taxation, education, and policy instruments but accounting for the shortcomings of the standard neoclassical model and supplementing the neoclassical treatment of these topics with insights from behavioral economics. The course begins each topic of the course with an introduction to the neoclassical treatment of the topic. The course then explores the implications of the neoclassical model and asks what identifies potential limitations of the assumptions of the standard model. The course then identifies a current public policy related to the topic and discusses how to analyze its effectiveness. The course covers both theoretical foundations in behavioral public economics and the design and testing of public policies. The course also highlights the link between theory and practice. The course achieves this with one or two guest lectures from individuals who span this divide between academia and real-world policy design. The course discusses topics include: introduction to behavioral public economics; theory of welfare; theory of policy interventions: taxation and nudges; health issues and policies; environmental issues and policies; savings and retirement; education and labor market (e.g., minimum wage policies, discrimination); and experimental design, RCTs, and policy evaluation. A solid foundation in microeconomics and applied mircoeconometrics is a prerequisite for attending the course.

    This course is mainly through the introduction of economic perspectives and methods to analyze the relationship between population, resources and environment and economic development, including the relationship between population and economic development, how to effectively allocate resources, how to protect the environment and other issues, this course will be for each problem, from the concept of economics, introduce the corresponding theories and cases, combined with the latest cutting-edge research results to discuss.

    This course adopts a hybrid teaching mode of online and offline, and the content of the online course is divided into 16 lectures. Online respectively the first lecture, introduction; Lecture 2 and 3, Fundamentals of Economic Theory; Fourth, the determinants of economic development level; Lecture 5, Population Development: Key Characteristics and Driving Forces; Lecture 6: Population Development and Economic Development; Lecture 7: Characteristics and Development of Resources; Lecture 8: Resources and Economic Development; Lecture 9: Characteristics and Evolution of Ecological Environment; Lecture 10: Ecological Environmental Protection and Economic Development; Lecture 11: Sustainable Development and China's Green Development. In class course is discussion sessions.

Government has, and continues to have, many ways of relating to businesses. This course takes a journey through them, tracking their historical changes and investigating how they shape our world today. Its particular focus is on how government ensures the provision of public services, whether through public or private sectors, or some combination of the two. What is the role of government today? How has this changed over recent decades? And what role does business play in contemporary society? In addressing these questions, the course focuses on the role of both public and private sectors in the management and delivery of services including health, education, transport and culture. It investigates the different ways such organizations coordinate their work and equips students to make critical decisions about whether services are best provided by hierarchical governments, businesses within markets, or in some other way.

This course places special emphasis on recent macroeconomic history and data, as well as how to retrieve and analyze macro data from publicly available sources, using the R statistical software. It covers core aspects of macroeconomics such as GDP, consumption, investment, the trade balance, and inflation through the lens of macroeconomic evidence, and discusses different macroeconomic theories (neoclassical and Keynesian) in light of this evidence. The course also discusses policy-relevant topics such as fiscal and monetary policy, public debt, and budget and trade deficits. An introductory economics course is a prerequisite.

This course examines how economies can be supported to grow and develop. Growth and development are not synonymous. Economic growth aims to increase a country’s national income. Development aims to generate positive qualitative changes. However, both indicators are continuous processes affecting a country’s welfare and social progress.

This course examines how cities pursue sustainability through governance, planning, and citizen participation. Students explore how environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability intersect within urban policy and daily life, connecting global frameworks—such as the UN 2030 Agenda and the European Green Deal—to local experimentation and community-driven innovation. While Florence provides a unique laboratory for studying how a historic city responds to contemporary challenges (climate adaptation, mobility transformation, housing pressures, and social inclusion) students are encouraged to compare it with other urban contexts across Europe and beyond. This comparative perspective fosters cross-fertilization among diverse models of governance and participation, allowing students to grasp how cities function as complex adaptive systems—dynamic environments where multiple actors, ideas, and scales interact to shape sustainable urban futures. USF combines analytical seminars, field explorations, and participatory exercises. Through simulations, role play games and collaborative projects, students experience the dynamics of real-world decision-making and democratic governance in sustainability planning.

This course traces the evolution of economic thinking throughout the late-modern and contemporary era. It surveys the major currents of classical, socialist, neo-classical, demand-side, Soviet, neoliberal, and contemporary economics while providing a detailed examination of both theory and practice. Economic thought is presented and discussed alongside its relationship of mutual influence with historical events to provide a clear perspective of how ideas and theories influenced the unfolding of key events, such as the Industrial Revolution or the rise of welfare economics, and of how in turn crises, conflicts and radical experiments influenced economic thinking. The different currents of economic thought are discussed both in the specific context of the times in which they were conceptualized as well as part of broad debates that continue to this day, such as those on laissez-faire versus State intervention, on welfare and private interest, on national sovereignty and globalization, and on inequality and growth. The course not only accounts for the theoretical origins of capitalist and socialist economics, but also details the theoretical and practical evolution of both, providing an analysis of the often sidelined but historically and economically meaningful Soviet planning experiments. It covers two and a half centuries of economic thought through subsequent sessions dedicated to major thinkers and the key events that influenced and shaped their theories. The course then reaches the contemporary era fully equipped to survey and discuss the theoretical and practical answers to the economic crises of the 1990s and 2000s. Finally, the course discusses the core issues and broad debates that link all its parts to consider their purposes and outcomes. 

This course introduces some of the basic concepts, methods, and models in economics, and provides a study of current economic issues in our everyday lives.

This course is a professional basic course that must be offered by undergraduate students of economics and management and expounds the basic theory of modern microeconomy. Microeconomics takes micro individuals as the research object, revolves around the allocation of scarce resources, and its central theory is price theory. Specifically, it studies consumer preferences and demand, manufacturer production and supply, competitive supply and market power in commodity markets, general equilibrium theory and externalities, etc. Through the study of the above theories, microeconomics provides explanations and guidance for the production behavior and consumption behavior of market subjects. Through the study of this course, students should understand the research object, research paradigm and framework system of microeconomics, know how micro individuals allocate resources and maximize returns under the action of market mechanism, and understand the internal laws and limitations of micro market economy operation. The teaching of this course should implement the principle of linking theory with practice, focus on explaining the basic theories, basic knowledge and basic skills of economics, cultivate students' initial ability to analyze and explain economic phenomena, and be able to apply the learned theories to the analysis of real economic management problems.

This course explores the concept of circular economy and sustainable development through the prism of private business including three primary subcategories: sustainable public purchases, sustainable corporate conduct under renewed corporate law rules, and sustainable consumption and support of environmental legislation at the international level. It discusses the newest developments in EU law for each subcategory.