Attendance and Grades in a Course

Course Overview

• The course is divided into 30 two-hour sessions, held on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
• Online lessons can be accessed through Google Meet: https://meet.google.com/udc-ygyh-jye

Attendance

• Attendance is recorded by completing quizzes.
• Students must attend at least 2/3 of the lessons to qualify as attending students.
• Any absences of more than 1/3 of the types, although adequately motivated, cannot be justified.
• Attendance can be both in-person and online.

Advantages of Attending Students

• The final grade can be increased up to 3 additional points thanks to the results of the quizzes.
• The exam for non-attending students is longer.
• Generally, attending students pass the course easily on average.

Exam Structure

• The exam consists of two parts: a written exam and an oral exam.
• The written exam has three parts: multiple choice questions, commentary/essay, and open questions about the book (for non-attending students).
• The oral exam covers the entire course program.

Code of Conduct

• Students must adhere to the code of conduct to participate in online classes.
• A device (smartphone, tablet, laptop) is required to check attendance and play quizzes on quizziz.com.

Course Materials

• The course uses a textbook titled "Public Economics" by Plinio Limata, priced at €34.00.
• The textbook is a compilation of chapters from various other textbooks, including Rosen's "Public Finance", Bernheim's "Microeconomics", and Thomas's "Managerial Economics".

Course Topics

• The course covers topics such as market efficiency and failures, public economics, utilitarianism, happiness, ethics, market power, oligopoly, externalities, public goods, and income redistribution.

Platforms and Tools

• The course uses Google Meet, Quizziz.com, and other platforms for additional activities such as ClassEx and Google forms.

Pitfalls of Observational Studies

• Observational studies collect data in a non-experimental setting, making it challenging to ensure a valid control group.
• A counterfactual is the outcome for people in the treatment group had they not been treated.

Economic Theory and Empirical Work

• Economic theory provides a framework for analyzing the causal relationship between government policy and individuals' behavior.
• Empirical work tests hypotheses arising from economic theory to determine if it is consistent with real-world phenomena.

Positive and Normative Theory

• Positive Theory explains the causes of an economic phenomenon.
• Normative Theory states what should be done to reach certain results.
• Normative Theory distinguishes between Goals and Tools.
• Goals can be fixed or flexible.
• An economic policy model is controllable if the political authority can pursue its objectives.

The Golden Rule of Tinbergen

• The number of instruments available to the policymaker has to be at least equal to the number of objectives.

Public Economics

• Public Economics studies all aspects of government intervention in the economy.
• It provides a framework for analyzing whether public intervention in the market is needed and to what extent.

Political Economy

• Political Economy lies on the boundary between Political Science and Economics.
• It focuses on outcomes rather than processes and is concerned with how the political environment affects economic outcomes.

Organic and Mechanistic View of Government

• Organic view of government: Society is a natural organism, and government is the heart.
• Mechanistic view of government: Government is created by individuals for individuals.
• Libertarians vs. Social Democrats: Role of government.

Measuring Government Size

• Government size can be measured by annual expenditures.
• Types of government expenditure: purchases of goods and services, transfers of income, and interest payments.
• Budget documents: unified budget and regulatory budget.

Role of Theory

• Economic models provide frameworks for thinking about factors that influence behavior.
• Virtue of simplicity: reducing a problem to its essentials.

Empirical Analysis

• Empirical analysis is based on observation and experience.
• It is used to test hypotheses.

Causation vs. Correlation

• Conditions required for government action X to cause societal effect Y: X must precede Y, X and Y must be correlated, and other explanations for any observed correlation must be eliminated.
• Example: correlation between being married and wages does not imply causation.
• Importance of the distinction for policy.