Portale di Ateneo - En.Unibs.it

The course “Economia Politica 2 HZ” offers basic instruments to understand and interpret the main and most recent macroeconomic phenomena: how the market works, the equilibrium concept, the labor market, inflation, economic growth, international trade, business cycle, monetary and fiscal policies, and crises.

The following list includes the main topics of discussion in this course of Macroeconomic Principles ("Economia Politica 2 HZ"):

1. Introduction to Macroeconomics
2. The Market for Goods and Services
3. The Financial Market
4. Interaction between the Goods and Financial Markets: IS-LM model
5. IS-LM in an open economy
6. The Labor Market
7. General Equilibrium Analysis: Aggregate Supply and Aggregate Demand
8. The Natural Rate of Unemployment and the Phillips Curve
9. Inflation, Production and the Money growth
10. Economic Growth: Stylized Facts
11. Saving, Capital Stock Accumulation and Production
12. Economic Growth and Technological Progress
13. Expectations: basic concepts
14. Financial Markets and Expectations
15. Expectations, Consumption and Investment
16. Expectations, Production and Economic Policy
17. Economic Policy in an open economy
18. Exchange rate Regimes
19. Is the crisis a pathological or physiological phenomenon?
20. Public Debt
21. Hyperinflation
22. Economic Policies: scenarios
23. European Economic and Monetary Union, crisis and opportunities

The textbook adopted for this course is (in Italian):

Blanchard, O., A. Amighini, F. Giavazzi (2016). Macroeconomia, una prospettiva europea. Il Mulino, Bologna. ISBN 978-88-15-2657-15,
Chapters 1-19, 22 and 23

The digital tool www.pandoracampus.it offers a full guideline to understand the textbook and solve the exercises.

David W. Findlay (2015). Esercizi di Macroeconomia. Il Mulino, Strumenti, Bologna. ISBN 978-88-15-25227-2

Students are strongly invited to read alternative textbooks to study the topics in more depth. Professor Trecroci's personal web page gives many examples of exercises, which can be downloaded, and more material or future reference. Professor Parisi will give more reference and information, or reading list, during the semester.

Prerequisites.

For proficieny in this course, students must have already attended “Economia Politica I” (Microeconomics Principles) and “Matematica Generale” (Basic Mathematics).

Teaching.

Active participation in class is required, and teachers suggest attending both the theoretical lectures and the complementary exercises lectures.
The digital platform www.pandoracampus.it is an useful tool to get a complete preparation to the exam: every chapter is complemented by figures, examples, exercises, and questions.

Final test.

The exam is a written final test. There will be no intermediate test, nor direct oral exams. The written test includes 2 theoretical open-ended questions and 3 exercises. The exercises require solving for models with numerical parameters, representing their graphical solutions and commenting the results.