Bachelor Program in Business and Management

Macroeconomics A

Macroeconomics A

Academic year 2018/2019

Sommario del corso

• Course objectives
• Results of learning outcomes
• Course delivery
• Learning assessment methods
• Program
• Suggested textbooks and readings
• Teaching tools

Course objectives

Endow students with the basic instruments to understand: the macroeconomic environment; the interconnections between economic variables and relationships (such as the consumption function); the tradeoff between different uses of resources; the tendency towards market equilibria which can be very unsatisfactory from a social point of view (such as the notion of equilibrium unemployment); the complexity  of economic adjustments and the difference between their action in the short, medium and long run. Finally, to understand the role of macroeconomic policies, especially the fiscal and monetary policies.

Results of learning outcomes

I expect that students can at least read economic news and understand economic debates and policies. And that they can make use of the notions they have learnt in their future activity.

Course delivery

Lectures and exercises

Learning assessment methods

Written examination, followed by a voluntary oral examination

Program

1. What is the macroeconomics and why it is useful

1.                                i.            Output growth, unemployment and inflation
2.                               ii.            Business cycles and Economic growth
3. 2.     Aggregate demands, aggregate supply and business cycles
   1.                                   i.            Aggregate demand
      1.                                 ii.            The goods market (IS curve) and the money market (LM curve)
      2.                               iii.            Equilibrium and adjustment mechanisms
      3.                               iv.            Aggregate supply
      4.                                 v.            Supply side in an imperfectly competitive model
      5.                               vi.            Aggregate demand and aggregate supply 
      6. 3.     Inflation, unemployment and monetary rules
         1.                                   i.            Inflation and the Phillips curve
            1.                                 ii.            Monetary rules and the three equation IS-LM-MR model
            2.                               iii.            Inflation and the medium run equilibrium
            3. 4.     Labour market and supply side policies
               1.                                i.            Supply side structures, policies and shocks
               2.                               ii.            Factors that shift the WS and PS curve
               3.                             iii.            Unions, wage setting arrangements and the equilibrium unemployment  
               4.                             iv.            The Beveridge approach to unemployment
               5. 5.     Monetary policy
                  1.                                   i.            Inflation, disinflation and deflation
                     1.                                 ii.            Monetary policy paradigms
                     2.                               iii.            Credibility, time consistency and rules versus discretion in monetary policy
4.                                i.            The automatic stabilizers
5.                               ii.            Discretionary fiscal policy
6.                             iii.            Deficits and debt
7.                             iv.            Monetizing the debt: seignorage and hyperinflation
8.                                i.            Basic intertemporal choice models: the life cycle and permanent income hypotheses
9.                               ii.            Investment in the theory of the firm
   1.                                 i.            Growth and growth rates
   2.                               ii.            The Solow-Swann model
   3.                             iii.            Solow growth accounting
   4.                             iv.            Technological progress in the S-S model
   5.                               v.            Economic convergence 

6. Fiscal policy

7. Consumption and investment

8. Exogenous growth theory

Blanchard, Amighini and Giavazzi, Macroeconomics: A European Perspective, Pearson 2014.

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