79168 - STRATEGY AND BEHAVIOR IN ECONOMICS

Conoscenze e abilità da conseguire

At the end of the course, the student will acquire the ability to analyze the typical economic situations of strategic interaction, that is situations where two or more individuals make decisions that will influcence one another's welfare. More specifically, she will be able to apply both models and behavioral information about individual choices of cooperation and conflict. Moreover, the student will acquire the ability to identify the type of strategic environment that she faces and to manage it in an effective way: social dilemma, negotiation, rent-seeking, voting, repeated cooperation, teamwork, coordination.

Contenuti

The course is organized with a part of lectures taught online on MS TEAMS (20 hours) and another taught in presence (20 hours). The number of students allowed in class is determined on the basis of class capacity and by the health and safety provisions that deal with the pandemic emergency. In case more students want to attend classes in presence than permitted by the rules, a system of shifts will be organized so to allow students to participate. Regardless of the health-related conditions and the specific organization of the course, students will be able to follow the lessons of the entire course remotely on MS TEAMS.

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The topics will include:

1) Competitive markets

2) Decision making under risk and uncertainty

3) Intertemporal choices

4) Coordination games

5) Social dilemmas

6) rent-seeking

7) Long-run interactions

8) Economics and the Environment

Testi/Bibliografia

There is no main textbook for this course, I recommend for the applications to international politics Scott Barrett (2007) Why Cooperate? The Incentive to Supply Global Public Goods, Oxford University Press. The readings are chapters from various textbooks and articles from scientific journals. In addition, there will be slides/lecture notes. As the course proceeds, the readings and slides will be posted online.

Please check every week as readings, slides, datasets, and other material are continuously posted.

Metodi didattici

This course has three learning goals: (i) to acquire basic economic concepts and the ability to do economic reasoning; (ii) to develop writing skills for short reports; (iii) to be able to manipulate data into descriptive statistics and graphs. You will learn about economic behavior in a variety of contexts – for example, in markets, team work, or when taking decisions under risk.

Methodology: you will learn Economics hands-on by personally making choices in a variety of contexts, then analyzing the choices taken by the whole class, and writing up a report with tables, graphs, and your interpretation. The lecture following the lab activity will compare the actual outcomes with the predictions of Economic models.

The class will typically meet almost one day per week in an IT laboratory, where you will participate in an activity on that week’s topic. You will then write a lab report based on the data from the classroom activity. This method encourages you to be actively involved in learning and in developing specific skills to transform raw data into information. To complete assignments, you will need an intermediate knowledge of Excel, or another spreadsheet. If you don't, you will need to learn it by yourself doing during the course. Class attendance is required.

Hence there will be:
* Frontal teaching - For online lectures on https://virtuale.unibo.it you need a password to register. Please email me for the password.
* Classroom games (to be done in the lab or remotely)
* almost weekly assignment to write a report based on the classroom activity

Modalità di verifica e valutazione dell'apprendimento

The class grade is the weighted average of grades earned in lab reports (40%), in final written exam (50%), and points earned during the classroom games (10%).

Class attendance is required. For online lectures register at https://virtuale.unibo.it

Lab Reports. Lab reports are due at the start of the class following the experiment and may not be turned in late. Event if you miss class on a day that a report is due, be sure to turn it in before class as a pdf file by email or uploading it on the course website. The experimental data necessary for you to complete your lab reports will be posted online.

The data are usually in Excel format, and you download them from the course website. In computing the overall grade for the lab report part, I will drop the lowest lab report score. This way if you do not hand in one lab report, you can still earn full credit for this part.

Collaboration policy. Everyone must complete his or her own lab reports, independently of other students. You may discuss general strategies for solving problems on the lab reports with your classmates, as long as you write your lab reports independently. Do not collaborate with a classmate and turn in very similar lab reports.

Attendance. It will be difficult for you to write a good lab report if you are absent on the day of the corresponding experiment, class attendance during the lab sessions is required. If you are not in class, you can connect remotely to a dedicated website. Ten percent of your final grade will also be based on your cumulative experimental “earnings” over the semester, and if you miss an experiment then you do not have any earnings (and receive zero points) for that experiment. When we meet in the lab, you will need unibo login rights in order to participate into the classroom activities (or a laptop with your own internet access).

Final exam. The final exam is written and will comprise 5-10 questions. Answers are short essays that focus on defining concepts, illustrating theories, reporting empirical evidence, linking theory and experiments, providing interpretations, solving numerical exercises. The focus will be on the readings and the slides.

Overall Grade. Half of the grade will come from lab reports & experimental points. If the student passes the final exam before February 2021, the coursework and grade from lab reports & experimental earnings will enter into the computation of the overall grade. This procedure will be followed even if the student re-takes the final exam multiple times. If the student passes the final exam after February 2021, he or she will need to attend again the lectures and earn a new grade for lab reports & experimental points.

Strumenti a supporto della didattica

- Slides
- dedicated website for classroom games

- Online lectures on https://virtuale.unibo.it
 REGISTERING FOR THIS CLASS IN THE ONLINE PLATFORM REQUIRES A PASSWORD.

PLEASE EMAIL ME TO OBTAIN THE PASSWORD: marco.casari@unibo.it

 

Orario di ricevimento

Consulta il sito web di Marco Casari