Microeconomics, macroeconomics, international economics and statistics.

The course does not presuppose an extensive background in economics and statistics. Students who have had a course in economic principles will find the course accessible, but students who have taken further courses in microeconomics, macroeconomics and statistics will find the concepts they studied and absorbed of help to easily digest the material covered by the course in Advanced International Trade. If necessary, some sections of the class will be devoted to the revision of economic concepts and statistical measure and methodologies, so to make the data analysis of home works as simple as possible.

Knowledge of International Economics at the level of Krugman, Obstfeld, Melitz (2018) textbook for undergraduates is a prerequisite and will be assumed of common knowledge.

The objective of the course is to give students the notions and the skills to collect and analyze international trade data, through statistical and econometric techniques and with an instrumental use of international trade theory guiding the empirical analysis.

The course starts with an overview of topics at the forefront of the research in international trade theory and trade policy analysis. Then it moves to applied topics. The material covered includes the collection of data on international trade flows, the quantification of comparative advantage, estimation of gravity models, the description of international migration flows through network analysis.

At the end of the course, students will master the empirical analysis generally used for the production of reports by international institutions (e.g. WTO, World Bank, Unctad).

The course will be analytically sound but the focus will be on concepts
and their application rather than theoretical formalism. Special attention
will be devoted to the interlink between concept, real phenomenon and
the quantification of the latter, though the use of simple data analysis.
When possible, examples will be given using Italian data, especially when
discussing comparative advantages, specialization, geography and trade,
firms in international markets, migration, foreign direct investments.

Part A: Theory

Globalisation
Classical Trade Theory
Measuring comparative advantages
Modern Trade Theory
Evaluating firms strategies in international markets
Geography and trade and external economies
Migration
The gravity of international relations and the evaluation of trade policies

Part B: Empirics

A review of the data types analysed in international economics
Analysis and data transformations
Univariate analysis and description of the characteristics of the distribution
Bivariate analysis: Correlation
Multivariate analysis: conditional correlation
Multivariate multilevel analysis: dummy variables and fixed effects
Model of causal regression
Analysis with panel data

• 1.  (C) John McLaren International Trade Wiley, Boston, 2013
• 2.  (C) UNCTAD Applied Trade Analysis Unctad/Wto, Geneva, 2017

Il programma da 3 CFU per frequentanti e non frequentanti consiste nella preparazione di un elaborato scritto che preveda una parte di analisi dei dati su un tema di commercio internazionale da concordare con il docente

• Lectures and Lab exercises with R statistical language.
  
  Traditional lectures will encourage the student's participation to class discussion; the data analysis Lab part will consist in data analysis followed by homework (every two weeks).

• The assessment of the course will consist in a written, multiple choice, test, made of 21 questions and four answers to each question. Only one answer is going to be the correct one and worth 1.5 points. Wrong answers get a penalization of -0.5. Unanswered questions do not imply
  any penalization. The maximum obtainable is 31.5 which is equivalent to "30 e lode".
  
  There is not going to be any mid-term exam.
  
  Students will receive an homework every two weeks, which will consist of an hands-on data analysis exercise to be made using the Statistical programing language R.
  
  Home-works are not compulsory. Student attending the R-labs and handing in all home-works in time will get an extra 1 point. Student attending the R-labs and handing in all home-works in time and using Markdown will get 2 extra points.
  
  Students interested in writing a Master Thesis in Advanced International Trade must attend the R-labs and must do the home-works.

Inglese (una parte della bibliografia è in lingua)

inglese