PROGRAM - European University Institute, Florence (Italy)

 

 

The EUI Economics Department entered the EDP-network in 2004.

The Department is committed to research, the provision of teaching at the highest international level for doctoral students and the generation of a flow of applied research on topics of European concern. In the 2005-06 academic year a re-structured doctoral programme with more emphasis upon coursework in the first year of the programme was introduced.

The teaching in the doctoral programme is based upon formal coursework in the areas of microeconomics , macroeconomics and econometrics , conducted at a level needed for the students to pursue successful academic careers in leading universities or to make the best use of professional non-academic opportunities in international organisations such as IMF, World Bank, European Commission and Central Banks. Alumni have been placed successfully both in such institutions and in top universities. The faculty also provides guidance in research methods and advises students on the preparation of their dissertation. The department's placement office supplies information about the job market process and assistance in preparing a CV and "job market" paper, which are made available for reference on the department's website.

Basic and advanced graduate courses in microeconomics, macroeconomics and econometrics are taken by students during their first year. In addition the department, together with visiting professors from top universities, offers a wide range of advanced and specialised graduate courses to first and second year students. Furthermore, weekly research seminars in macroeconomics, microeconomics, econometrics and economic policy are given by visiting speakers. Students have a supervisor and a second advisor chosen from amongst the faculty. By efficient and regular supervision, students are expected to complete their thesis within four years, during the course of which they are funded by their home countries and by the Institute. Full details of the programme are available from the web site http://www.eui.eu/ECO/ .

The research undertaken in the Department depends on the interests of the current staff but covers a wide variety of topics, some of which are summarised below.

Microeconomics: the main research themes include: banking, financial stability, corporate governance, contract theory with applications to the design of incentives in organisations and to firm pricing policies, general equilibrium theory and financial economics, optimal taxation, intergenerational risk-sharing, information transmission in strategic market environments, and social networks.

Macroeconomics: the main focus is on: international economics, general equilibrium models of the international transmission mechanism and optimal monetary policy in open economies, analyses of currency and financial crises and their international contagion, models of international policy cooperation and international financial architecture, growth theory, monetary theory, labour theory, political economy, contract theory, learning theory, and the macroeconomic implications of labour market institutions.

Econometrics: empirical work on finance and growth, households’ savings and financial decisions, firms’ investment and adjustment policies, culture and economic performance, the transmission mechanism of monetary policy in the Euro area, and other more methodological issues related to the study of non-stationary time series, methods for large datasets, forecasting, aggregation issues, time series models for mixed frequency data, and instrumental variable estimation.