Courses

In our four-year PhD program, students are required to take courses during the first and second year. The third and the fourth year are fully dedicated to research and to the development of the Ph.D. thesis.

Requirements for full-time PhD students

 

Students of the 38° cycle are required to take courses for a total of 200 hours during the first year and 160 during the second year of the program.

Students of the 38° cycle (a.y. 2022/2023) are required to attend and take exams of the following mandatory courses and select elective courses from this list. 

First year mandatory courses (200 hours out of 200)

 

First Semester - 2nd Period

 Students will have to choose one among the three following courses in Mathematics. The choice should depend on the student's background and research interests, and can be discussed with the coordinator of the PhD program.

 

Second Semester - 3rd Period

 

 Second Semester - 4th  Period

 

Second year mandatory courses (90 hours out of 160)

 

First Semester - 1st Period

 

 Students wishing to waive out of any of the mandatory courses must submit a waiver request to the PhD director. The waiver request must include a transcript of the relative grades and a syllabus from the prior course(s) taken, that proves previous coverage of at least 90% of the material.

As a general rule, students asking for a waiver will be asked to pass a preliminary exam, unless the PhD director and the professor who teaches the course agree that -- based on the information provided -- the student can be granted an exemption

 

***Lesson periods: 

1st Period: 06/09/2021-30/10/2021

2nd Period: 08/11/2021-16/12/2021

3rd Period: 14/02/2022-26/03/2022

4th Period: 20/04/2022-30/05/2022

OTHER ACTIVITIES

To improve their research skills, students are encouraged to interact with their advisor and with other faculty members on a regular basis. In addition, the program offers several activities:

  • PhD Forums: one-day workshops in which PhD students present the advances of their research and discuss them with the faculty.
  • Internal and brown-bag seminars: students in their third and fourth year are invited to present their works within the series of internal seminars, where faculty members, graduate students and visiting scholars have the chance to illustrate their early-stage projects and most recent research outputs. Works-in-progress and research plans can also be presented within our more informal brown-bag seminar series.      
  • Reading Groups: topic-specific informal meetings which typically take place on a monthly basis. Currently we cover topics in Microeconomics (Experimental Economics, IO, Labor Economics, etc) and Macroeconomics (Political Economy, Comparative Development, Business Cycle, etc), but graduate students and faculty members are welcome to propose and organize reading groups on topics that are not covered yet.
  • Roundtables on specific issues of special interest for PhD students, such as the choice of a research topic, the improvement of presentation skills, the search for funding opportunities, etc.  
  • Mock Presentations (freely organized by the students to present their work in progress).
  • Mock Interviews (organized by the Placement Director for job market candidates).