Learning outcomes

The course completes the contents, both from a cultural and educational point of view, of the fundamental course of Political Economy that teaches the basic principles of welfare economics and market efficiency analysis from a social point of view. These notions are essential to understanding the impact of economic policies or shocks, such as the 2020 health emergency, on the well-being of citizens and firms’ efficiency, the supply of labor and the demand for consumer goods, and on the economy in general. The acquisition of basic knowledge concerns the typical tools of a laboratory devoted to the analysis of economic policies and to the economic interpretation of large economic data bases such as micro and macro-econometrics tools and mathematical programming tools for the analysis of social accounting matrices and simple equilibrium models connected to them. The skills that this approach based on the learning-by-doing principle (in this case by analysing data and economic policies related to real social problems) intends to develop concern the team work, considering that more students will work on the same or on more projects of interest, leadership (the project manager will be responsible for the quality of the result of the project itself), ability to solve problems also through co-creation processes of solutions based on the dialogue between the stakeholders of the project itself, and the ability to implement the same projects at and with companies or institutions that are stakeholders. These cognitive and non-cognitive skills, also of a transversal type such as communication skills within the group and skills in presenting results, autonomy of critical judgment and learning through practice, are fundamental for the cultural growth of the student and for his professional practice because the student will be able to take advantage of a set of analysis tools and interpretation of economic big data and models acquired in the laboratory that are supposed to be of great utility for the future profession.