17537 - Economic Analysis of Public Policies

Learning outcomes

Economic analysis is widely used in various public policy fields such as environmental policy, industrial organization, social welfare, and labour market. Economic principles of consumer and producer theory, social welfare economics, public goods and externality, market failure, market structure, imperfect information, business cycle, monetary and fiscal policy, and economic growth offer many insights into understanding of economics in deriving solutions to the issues of public policy. These economic principles and some quantitative methods will be studied in detail to understand the application of economic theories and quantitative models to public policy analysis. The course will provide students with the concepts and tools of economics to analyse the role of government intervention, its justification, and implications for efficiency and fairness, using specific policy areas as examples.

Course contents

Part One: Introduction to Economic Analysis of Public Policies: The Public Sector in a Mixed Economy. The public sector in Italy.

Part Two: the public debt. The Italian debt: managing the Public Sector's Assets and Liabilities. Long term sustainability (Bosi, only the appendixes of chap 2 and all chap 5).

Part Three:The State intervention. An example of public intervention: regulation of economic activity. Normative and positive theories of regulation. Theory of optimal pricing. Rate of return regulation, price-caps, maximum and minimum prices. Incentives in regulation. The alternatives to regulation. Privatisation in Italy (Bosi, chap 6).

Part Four: Macroeconomic functions of the European Union. The stabilization bureau. The IS-LM model. The European Union. Fiscal and monetary policies in the European Union. The Greece case (Bosi, chap. 5).

Part Five: Fiscal decentralization and federalism. Centralization and decentralization: nature of federalism and federal society. The economic advantages of decentralization. Economic theory of fiscal federalism. The optimal allocation across levels of governance. The case of Italy (Bosi,chap. 4).

Part Six: The social care policies.The Welfare State: European models and characteristics.Distribution bureau. Benefits in cash and in kind. Means testing. Italian social policies, poverty, the Beckerman indexes.The unemployment subsidies inItaly(Bosi, chap 7, paragraph 4 and 5).

Readings/Bibliography

Bosi Paolo, Corso di scienza delle finanze, Il Mulino, 2012.

Slides and suggested readings on http://www.moodle.unibo.it.

Teaching methods

Class lessons.

Assessment methods

Written exam, two hours, four open questions.

Teaching tools

Slides.

Detailed information on http://www.moodle.unibo.it

Links to further information

http://www.moodle.unibo.it

Office hours

See the website of Cristina Ugolini