Economic Policy

Catalog description

Economic policy may be seen as the ultimate goal of economic analysis. How to choose between alternative economic courses in some specific area or at the macroeconomic level? How to tradeoff one policy objective, e.g. equity, versus another, e. g, efficiency? How to take into account political constraints while looking for socially optimal policies? Such is the nature of the questions to be handled in this course, which may be taken as the natural culmination of an economic curriculum. Its aim is to make students familiar with the main contemporary issues in economic policy at national level and to equip them with the analytical instruments to understand what is at stake in policy debates around the world and, ultimately, to form one's opinion about what should be done in particular areas. The course will deal with economic policy issues as applicable to any country, even though special attention will be given to emerging and developing countries. As far as possible, it will also systematically emphasize the distributional consequences of policies and consequent political economy dimension? It will not deal with multilateral issues like trade, migration or environment.