Facoltà di Economia

The course will touch upon the basic elements of consumer choice and production theory in the context of the neo-classical theory of value and costs within the market regimes of perfect competition and monopoly. Reference to basic theorems of welfare in society will be made, without avoiding the several critiques that are raised to the so-called growing “market society.

No formal pre-requisites

The course programme is divided into xxxx inter-related parts as follows:

Topic 1 Thinking as an economist: supply and demand. Free or coercing markets? (1)
Topic 2 The consumer’s (often) rational choice (2)
Topic 3 Individual and market demand (3)
Topic 4 Consumer’s surplus and market-driven well-being (3)
Topic 5 The firm and its goals (4)
Topic 6 Technology (4)
Topic 7 Cost functions (4)
Topic 8 Perfect competition (5)
Topic 9 Monopoly (5)
Topic 10 Efficiency, Pareto and Marshall welfare criteria (5)



During each lecture, the lecturer presents the planned content with the aid of power point presentations and invites students to critical reflection and dialogue.

• What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, by Michael Sandel, Penguin Books, 2013.
Required reading for Prof. Piga’s lectures (number of chapters in the schedule):
Principles of Microeconomics-Lectures, Giappichelli Editore (2022).
Lectures Material handed over on line.
T.A. sessions material will be put on line.

The course combines different teaching methods: lectures; seminars; student presentations. The lectures will provide the students with the necessary information and reading guidelines on the phenomena under study. Students are expected to attend each class, to come to class prepared and to participate in discussions.

Students will agree the topic of their presentations with the lecturers and give assessed Power-point presentations in which they will critically evaluate the content and argument of a chosen topic and introduce related questions for the class discussion.

Course assessment
The (default )verification of learning takes place exclusively through a final examination which consists of an individual and group presentation as discussed below. The objective of the final examination is to verify the achievement of the course learning outcome. In particular, the examination assesses the student's overall preparation, ability to integrate knowledge of the different parts of the programme, consequentiality of reasoning, analytical ability and autonomy of judgement. In addition, ownership of language and clarity of exposition are assessed, in adherence with the Dublin descriptors.

All students are allowed to take the mid-term week exam.

Attending students
There are 3 proofs of exam. One needs to have passed the three proofs with an average of at least 18/30 with at least 16/30 in each proof.
20% of the assessment will be based on a 2-pages paper (at most 8000 characters), produced by a group of 10 students (15 groups) where the team membership is pre-assigned by the Professor. Students will choose a current global or local relevant issue on their own and will discuss it with a perspective they found in Sandel’s book, by explicitly quoting at the beginning one passage (no more than 3 lines) of the book. The discussion will be used to both confute and reinforce a point made by Prof. Sandel with the help of the new issue selected by the group.
The paper has to be turned in by no later than May 17, 2025 with all 10 signatures in it, otherwise points assigned will be 0 to all of the 10 students.
Afterwards the paper will be presented by each group on a 15-30 minutes closed-room session with Prof. Piga where the 10 students will be randomly last-minute divided into 2 groups of 5 students, in favor and against the topic, and debate orally, being judged on their capacity to argue one against the other, involving everyone in the two 5-members team. Lack of presence in the debate implies individually losing the grade of the Sandel paper.
40% of the assessment will be based on a mid-term written exam in mid-semester.
40% of the assessment will be based on a final written exam at the end of the course.
The final grade will be-rescaled upwards according to a curve based on the overall class performance.
The final written exam can take place also in the second round (“appello”) without losing the grade obtained through written midterm and paper. The said grade is lost if the student postpones the written final exam to the September round (“appello”), being treated after that as “non-attending student” (see below).
Rejection of midterm grade is not possible. If the attending student turns down the grade after the final written exam of the first/second round (“appello”) or fails to pass, he/she becomes treated as a “non-attending student” for the successive round/rounds of exams (“appelli”), however in case he/she passed the paper, 20% of the grade will be based on the paper grade still.
Attending students who failed the mid-term are allowed to take the first round exam with a final written exam on the whole program. In case he/she passed the paper, 20% of the grade will be based on the paper grade still.

Non-attending students (students with less than 80% of presence in class or that have turned down the attending student grade or failed the attending student evaluation).
In the final exam of not attending students who did not participate to the debate, a question on the Sandel book will be inserted and an additional question on microeconomics will be asked.
In the final exam of not attending students who did participate to the debate one additional question on microeconomics will be asked.
Non-attending students will take a final written exam based on the program underlined in the textbook. The number of questions to be answered will depend on having passed or not the mid-term week exam. In case he/she passed the paper and debated it, 20% of the grade will be based on the paper grade still. Lack of presence in the debate implies losing the grade of the Sandel paper.


Minimum score for passing the written test 18 out of 30.
After listening to the presentations, the lecturers communicate the results to the students registered for the examination via the Delphi system.
Students may take the examination on all available dates. there is no roll-call jump.

The examination will be assessed according to the following criteria:

• FAIL: important deficiencies and/or inaccuracies in the knowledge and understanding of the topics; limited ability to analyse and synthesise, frequent generalisations and limited critical and judgemental skills, the topics are set out inconsistently and with inappropriate language;
• 18-20: Barely sufficient knowledge and understanding of the topics with possible generalisations and imperfections; sufficient capacity for analysis, synthesis and autonomy of judgement, the topics are frequently exposed in an incoherent manner and with inappropriate/technical language;
• 21-23: Routine knowledge and understanding of topics; ability to analyse and synthesise correctly with sufficiently coherent logical argumentation and appropriate/technical language
• 24-26: Fair knowledge and understanding of the topics; Good analytical and synthetic skills with arguments expressed in a rigorous manner but with language that is not always appropriate/technical.
• 27-29: Comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the topics; considerable capacity for analysis and synthesis. Good autonomy of judgement. Arguments presented in a rigorous manner and with appropriate/technical language
• 30-30L: Excellent level of knowledge and thorough understanding of topics. Excellent analytical and synthetic skills and independent judgement. Arguments expressed in an original manner and with appropriate technical language.

Course evaluation for attending students:
• In-class presentations (100 %)
• Rules for the presentation: Students can work on their presentations alone or in groups. A group may comprise 2 to 4 students. The students agree on the topic of the presentations with the lecturers, individually or in groups. Each student/group prepares its presentation and emails it to the lecturers at least one day in advance of the day scheduled for class discussion. In the case of group presentations, each group member receives the same final grade.

Course evaluation for non-attending students:
• Final oral exam (100%).
• Rules for the oral exam: the final exam consists of an approximately 20-minute oral test with questions on one of the textbooks indicated above,

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Topic 1 Thinking as an economist: supply and demand. Free or coercing markets? (1)
Topic 2 The consumer’s (often) rational choice (2)
Topic 3 Individual and market demand (3)
Topic 4 Consumer’s surplus and market-driven well-being (3)
Topic 5 The firm and its goals (4)
Topic 6 Technology (4)
Topic 7 Cost functions (4)
Topic 8 Perfect competition (5)
Topic 9 Monopoly (5)
Topic 10 Efficiency, Pareto and Marshall welfare criteria (5)

What Money Cant Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, by Michael Sandel, Penguin Books, 2013.

Principles of Microeconomics-Lectures, Giappichelli Editore (2022).

In-class teaching.

20% of the assessment will be based on a 2-pages paper (at most 8000 characters), produced by a group of 8-9 students (16 groups) where the team membership is pre-assigned by the Professor. Students will choose a current global or local relevant issue on their own and will discuss it with a perspective they found in Sandel’s book, by explicitly quoting at the beginning one passage (no more than 3 lines) of the book. The discussion could be used to confute or reinforce a point made by Prof. Sandel with the help of the new issue selected by the group. The paper has to be turned in by no later than May 15, 2023 with all 8-9 signatures in it, otherwise points assigned will be 0 to all of the 8-9 students.
40% of the assessment will be based on a mid-term written exam in mid-semester.
40% of the assessment will be based on a final written exam at the end of the course. The final grade will be-rescaled upwards according to a curve based on the overall class performance.
Non-attending students (students with less than 80% of presence in class or that have turned down the attending student grade or failed the attending student evaluation or that have failed the mid-term written exam) will take a final written exam based on the program underlined in the textbook.