This course aims at providing students with tools necessary for understanding the methodological issues underlying economics and, more generally, social science. At the end of the course, students will be able to understand the methodological aspects related to models relating to strategic and economic behavior, some aspects related to the methods of measurement and analysis of social phenomena, and general aspects of philosophy of science applied to the social sciences. Some of the questions addressed will include: what do we mean by strategic rationality? what are the strategic element associated to cooperation? is it possible to induce cooperation? is it possible to understand social conventions as strategic coordination? what are social norms? how do we measure and engineer them?

(1) Knowledge and Understanding: At the end of the course, students will be able to understand methodological aspetcs linked to models of economic and strategic behavior, some aspects pertaining to methods of measurment and analysis of social phenomena, and general aspects of philosophy of science as applied to social science. (2) Applying Knowledge and Understanding: The second part of the course gives students the tools needed for applied work and, in the in-class part, helps them in the organization of such work. The course indeed does not only offer methodological knowledge, but also functions as an example of the application of such empirical research to policy design. (3) Making Judgments: At the end of the course the student will be able to make judgments about the deep characteristics of our interdependent social choices. Along with such an analysis the students will also be able to use concepts learned in composite judgemnts relative to a concrete case.  (4) Communication Skills:The assessment includes students' active participation, which will take place both offline (discussion, participation, presentation) and online (active participation to discussion forum) (5) Learning Skills: At the end of the course students will be able to come up with both explanations and normative arguments relative to social institutions.

After an introduction to methodological issues in economics and in social science, the first part of the course focuses on aspects linked to the theory of strategic interaction and its applications in the social science. Students will be introduced to a variety of kinds of strategic interactions (cooperation, coordination, conflict, etc.) While such types of interaction will be used to introduce and discuss the formal aspects of the theory, we also discuss the experimental literature pertaining to each type, what allows us to offer empirically motivated answers to some of the theoretical questions. In the second part of the course, we will discuss the strategic nature of some social institutions like conventions and norms, as well as issues related to measurement in such models. We will further discuss the issue of modelization in economics and in social science, on the basis of famous examples of economic models. The course will end with a section devoted to the philosophy of social science.

Required: - Cristina Bicchieri, Norms in the Wild, Oxford University Press 2016 - Avinash Dixit e Barry Nalebuff, L’arte della strategia, TEA 2012 Suggested: - Francesco Guala, Capire le istituzioni, LUP 2019 - Michael Luca and Max H. Bazerman, The Power of Experiments: Decision Making in a Data-Driven World - Cristina Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, Cambridge University Press - Brian Skyrms: Evolution of the Social Contract

Lectures, Discussion, Exercises, Presentations, Case studies, Flipped Classroom

Written exam

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