Economics of growth and sustainability

The course aims to introduce students to the theory of economic growth and of sustainability. The first part of the course aims to give students the analytical basis to contextualize sustainable development within the economic growth theory. The mathematical principles involved will be briefly presented, the main models of exogenous growth will be developed introducing the environment and environmental policies as additional control variables.
ii. The second part of the course aims to give students an overview of the environmental, social and economic role of sustainable development. The role of sustainable development in the international setting will be presented considering international trade and analysing the United Nations sustainable development goals. The applied part of this module will present the indicators of sustainable development and the relationship between economic development and environment will be analyses through the so called Environmental Kuznets Curve.

At the end of the course students will get acquainted with the fundamental models of macro-economic growth theory, will be able to apply them and interpret their results in the broader context of sustainability and sustainable development.
Furthermore, they will familiarize with the multidimensional concept of sustainability, understand trade off and potential complementarities across sustainable development dimensions, will get a clear view of the multiple challenges that economic policies have to face to promote sustainability, and also of the opportunities that may arise. Finally, they will be updated on the ongoing international UN debate on sustainable development.
Overall, the course will improve the students' capacity to address the sustainability challenge with an holistic and integrated perspective, supporting the idea that complexity can be managed.