ECONOMIC POLICY AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT

The course will deal with the three basic questions of economic activity (What, how, for whom to produce, i.e. what is the economy for), digging into the different roles of the various spheres of economic activity and the institutions of market economies: money, infrastructures, social capital.

An introduction to systemic approaches to economic development in the footsteps of Hirschmann, Kapp, Myrdal, Perroux is provided and used to assess local economic policy issues. By framing development this way, students will dwell critically into a) the conventional view of economic problems and b) the social construction of a public discourse around them.