Economics, Policies and Management of Territory
Course Overview
This course aims at providing advanced methodological, cultural, scientific, and professional knowledge to understand the main economic and management issues of public administration. Graduates will therefore have a strong cultural background and a thorough multi-disciplinary training making them able to comprehend the functioning of public administration, as well as its recent evolution, with the purpose of elaborating strategies in line with the normative, organizational, managerial, and technological innovation of public administration. The course also aims at conveying high theoretical and practical competences needed for the evaluation and management of human, technological and organization resources. Such a comprehensive knowledge will allow graduates to understand the problems arising in increasingly complex organizations; to promote policy planning, evaluation and implementation, having the goal of achieving economic and social development by improving efficacy and efficiency of the services supplied by public administration.
Educational Goals
Students will acquire advanced knowledge in economic, financial, statistical, legal, political, institutional, and managerial issues related to the activities of public administrators, and private organizations acting for local development. Students will be able to evaluate the issues related to the organization of the civil service, to support public planning and the implementation of public policies, and to assess the outcome of the latter in a context of scarce resources and highly heterogeneous agents.
Students will acquire critical skills to analyze, forecast and read the processes of innovative change characterizing the regional context; they will learn approaches, methods and techniques of territorial analysis, management of public administrations and private organizations, and issues about the relationships between these actors and others operating in the territory. In order to develop analytical skills, the course addresses case studies related to the activities of public administrators. In addition, students will provide a critical evaluation of evidence provided by public managers in order to identify the critical variables of the investigated issues.
Students will be able to explain available data and other information, analysis methodology, and results rigorously, to both professionals and non-professionals, by using suitable studies, charts and diagrams, software programs.
Students will learn to become independent in organizing their own professional updating regarding the organization, functioning, and administration of local government. Therefore, students will master the techniques of bibliographical research, and will be able to collect recent publications available on online scientific journals and data available from public, private, national and international agencies (Bank of Italy, European Central Bank, etc.).
Teaching consists in frontal lessons and exercises. Students’ learning and ability will be tested by recurrent assessments: mock exams, interactive discussion in class with invited experts, review of professional reports and case studies, and final exams.
Job Opportunities
- Managers in public administration
- Professions in the public sector in charge of planning, management, and control
- Professions in the private sector supporting regional policymaking and policy implementation
- Consultant for EU projects and funding
