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 introductory data analysis.
When possible, examples will be given using Italian data, especially when discussing comparative advantages, specialisation, geography and trade, firms in international markets, migration, foreign direct investments.

Part A:

Globalisation
Classical Trade Theory
The measurement of comparative advantages
New Trade Theory and heterogeneous firms
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 (module b)

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) Paul Krugman, Maurice Obstfeld and Marc Melitz International Trade (volume 1) Pearson, New YOrk, 2019 » Pagine/Capitoli: Prerequisite
• 2.  (A) UNCTAD/WTO A Practical Guide to Trade Policy Analysis Unctad/Wto, Geneva, 2013
• 3.  (C) Gábor Békés and Gábor Kézdi Data Analysis for Business, Economics, and Policy Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2021

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

• The lectures will be based on traditional teaching and in class discussions.

• The assessment of the course will consist in a written, multiple-choice test, made of 21 questions with four answers for each question. Only one answer is going to be the correct one and worth 1.5 points. Wrong answers get a penalisation of -1.0 points. Unanswered questions do not imply
  any penalisation. The maximum obtainable is 31.5 which is equivalent to "30 e lode".
  
  There is not going to be any mid-term exam.
  
  
  Students interested in writing a Master Thesis in "Firms and trends in global markets" must attend the module B of the course.

Inglese (una parte della bibliografia è in lingua)

inglese