Economics

Students are expected to acquire - the tools and concepts to understand and represent individual behaviour both as consumption units, investors and firms, in certain, uncertain and strategic environments - the tools and concepts to understand and represent the working of single markets, in conditions of perfect and imperfect competition and the basic tools for intervention and regulation - the tools and concepts to understand and interpret the working of the whole economy, its properties and limitations - ability to solve problems conceerning individual and market behaviour - critical and selective capacity to apply the above tools to analyze, interpret and represent real phenomena from the microeconomic point of view - ability to autonomously read and understand advanced textbooks and academic articles at the frontier of economic literature in the field of microeconomics.

The student will be assessed on - his/her demonstrated ability to discuss the main course contents using appropriate terminology, proper concepts and rigorous thinking. - his/her demonstrated ability to solve simple problems concerning the main contents of the course, applying the appropriate tools.

This course is intended to serve as a broad introduction to the huge literature using agent-based computational approaches to the study of economic dynamics. It is organized in three parts. The first one (“Why?”) will discuss the roots of the critiques to the mainstream paradigm from a methodological, empirical and experimental perspective. We shall briefly review the building blocks of mainstream models (rationality, equilibrium, interactions, etc.) and shortly present some of the evidence coming from cognitive psychology and experimental economics, network theory and empirical studies, supporting the idea that bounded rationality, non-trivial interactions, non-equilibrium dynamics, heterogeneity, etc. are irreducible features of modern economies. In the second part (“What?”) we shall discuss what ACE is and what are its main tools of analysis. We will define an ABM and present many examples of classes of ABMS, from the simplest (cellular automata, evolutionary games) to the most complicated ones (micro-founded macro models).The third part (“How?”) aims at understanding how ABMs can be designed, implemented and statistically analyzed. We shall briefly present the basics of programming, by both discussing the pros and cons of using simulation platforms (Matlab, NetLogo, Swarm, LSD, etc.) vs. computer languages (Java, C++, etc.) and providing some simple “hands-on” applications to cellular automata. Finally, we will see how the outputs of ABMs simulation should be treated from a statistical point of view (e.g., Montecarlo techniques) and we will discuss two hot topics in ABM research: empirical validation and policy analysis.

The aim of this course is to introduce students to the main topics of economic methodology, linking philosophical issues with practical problems that economists face in the confrontation of models with data. The course focuses on forms of explanation in economics; foundational issues of probability, statistical and causal inference; the role of models and their appraisal; issues in decision theory and the methodology of experimental economics