ISEG Winter School 2027

Speaker: Giulia Giupponi (Bocconi University)

Date: January 20–22, 2027 (9:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.)

Room : Auditorium 4 (New Quelhas Building)

Course Description:

This short course provides an overview of selected topics in modern public economics, with a focus on the design and evaluation of social insurance, pensions, taxes and transfers, and labor market policies. The course is organized around a central policy-design question: How should governments balance insurance and redistribution against behavioral responses, fiscal costs, and labor market distortions?

The course combines theoretical frameworks with empirical evidence. We will discuss canonical models, including the Bailey-Chetty framework for optimal unemployment insurance, and show how sufficient-statistics formulas connect theory to credible empirical estimates. The course will also cover quasi-experimental evidence using difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity, regression kink, and event-study designs.

By the end of the course, students should be able to: understand the main economic rationales for social insurance and redistribution; interpret empirical evidence on policy impacts; and relate reduced-form estimates to welfare and policy design.

PROGRAM

Part I: Social Insurance and Unemployment Insurance

• Introduction: Why Public Economics and Why Social Insurance?
• Optimal Unemployment Insurance: Theory and Empirical Implementation
• Insuring workers or insuring jobs? Unemployment insurance versus short-time work

Part II: Retirement Policy

• Why Social Security?
• A Taxonomy of Pension Reforms
• Social Security and Labor Supply
• Social Security and Savings

Part III: Support for Low-Income Households: Tax Credits and Minimum Wages

• Labor Supply Responses to Taxes and Transfers
• Minimum Wage Policy: Employment and Distributional Impacts

Course Requirements

Some prior knowledge of microeconomics and applied microeconometrics is recommended. Familiarity with causal inference methods such as differences-in-differences, regression discontinuity, event studies, and instrumental variables will be useful.

Student Feedback Session

There will be a number of slots available for participants who are interested in receiving feedback on their work during individual or small-group meetings. Interested students are encouraged to express their interest in advance and, where appropriate, to share a brief description of their project (about 1–2 pages).

Speaker: Rui Pedro Esteves

Date: January 20–22, 2027 (2:30 p.m.–6:30 p.m.)

Room: Auditorium 5 (New Quelhas Building)

Course Description:

How did the major markets for financial assets emerge, develop, and become international? Why are these markets often geographically concentrated? How significant were differences in infrastructure, institutions, and regulation for their success? What explains the ebbs and flows of financial regulation? In this module, we seek to answer these questions from a microhistorical perspective. In particular, we focus on the interaction between the functions and actors in financial markets and their outcomes, as shaped by the regulatory framework. We will examine several ‘financial revolutions,’ from the emergence of organized stock exchanges in the 17th century to the Dodd-Frank Act and other factors driving stricter regulation of financial transactions since the 2008 crisis.

PROGRAM

Part I: Capital Markets: Origins and Going Global

Part II: Stock Markets – Microstructure and Regulation

Part III: Types of Banking

Part IV: Banking Regulation

Part V: Certification and Innovation

Part VI: Positive Theories of Financial Regulation

Speaker: Armando Miano, University of Naples Federico II, CSEF, and CEPR

Date: January 25–27, 2027 (9:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.)

Room : Auditorium 4 (New Quelhas Building)

Course Description:

Surveys and survey experiments have become increasingly popular in economics. Surveys are a powerful tool for measuring beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, preferences, and reasoning—factors that would otherwise be invisible and that are critical determinants of agents’ economic and political behavior. Well-designed survey experiments allow researchers to test economic theories and answer policy-relevant questions by creating identifiable and controlled variations in these factors. In this course, we will explore how to design and use surveys and survey experiments and review studies that apply these tools in many fields of economics. We will analyze current challenges and best practices, and discuss open questions and future directions.

PROGRAM

Part I: Introduction

Part II: Using Surveys to Measure the Invisible and the Limits of the Revealed Preferences Approach

Part III: Measuring subjective expectations, beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, preferences, and reasoning

Part IV: Issues in survey design: defining the right sample, writing questions, managing respondents’ attention

Part V: Biases in Surveys

Part VI: Survey experiments: priming, information treatments, vignettes, conjoint experiments

Part VII: Applications: macroeconomics, finance, political economy, public economics, labor economics

Part VIII: The Future of Surveys and Survey Experiments