Economics of European integration

Course content

The course aims to introduce the main economic challenges facing European integration nowadays, the tools the European Union has developed to tackle those challenges and their consequences for the European economy. In particular, the course will focus on the Next Generation EU and its Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), the most extensive stimulus package ever financed in Europe. The Recovery and Resilience Plans cover policy objectives that are the core issues for European economic integration for the following decades, such as structural reforms to boost European productivity, the resilience of European value chains, and the implementation of the green and digital transition.

Objectives (and/or specific learning outcomes)

Understand basic tools of microeconomics, macroeconomics and econometrics and apply them to real world problems that are at the core of current and future EU policy making.

Prerequisites and Corequisites

Required and Corequired knowledge and skills

Intermediate Microeconomics and Macroeconomics, Public Economics.

Teaching methods and learning activities

Class lectures, guest seminars, team project.

References, bibliography, and recommended reading

R.E. Baldwin and C. Wyplosz, The Economics of European Integration, 6th Edition, McGraw-Hill.

Letta, Enrico. Much More than a Market: Towards a Political Europe. Paris: Institut Jacques Delors, 2023.

M. Buti, W. Röger, A. Turrini, Is Lisbon Far from Maastricht? Trade-offs and Complementarities between Fiscal Discipline and Structural Reforms, CESifo Economic Studies, 55(1), 2009, pp. 165–196.

D. Papageorgiou, E. Vourvachaki, Macroeconomic effects of structural reforms and fiscal consolidations: Trade-offs and complementarities, European Journal of Political Economy, 48, 2017, pp. 54-73.

G. Eggertsson, A. Ferrero, A. Raffo, Can structural reforms help Europe?, Journal of Monetary Economics, 61, 2014, pp 2-22.

Juhász, Réka, Nathan J. Lane, and Dani Rodrik. The New Economics of Industrial Policy. No. w31538. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2023.

Course notes

Université virtuelle

Contribution to the teaching profile

This course covers the underlying economic principles of the ongoing European integration process. The course presents micro- and macro-economic tools that permit analyzing European integration and its political processes. It combines elements from international trade, industrial organization, labor economics, public economics, and fiscal policy focused on the EU integration process. The objective is to understand how EU policies are devised and how economic intuition relates to these policies.

Other information

Additional information

Physical lecture and virtual support available.

Contacts

lorenzo.trimarchi@unamur.be (teacher)
glenn.magerman@ulb.be (coordinator)

Campus

Solbosch

Evaluation

Method(s) of evaluation

written examination
Group work

written examination

Group work

The course aims to allow students to analyze the recovery plan of one EU country successfully. Each student will participate in a group project and an individual written exam:

Teamwork (50% of the final grade):

The group project will analyze a part of one country's recovery plan. The work will be presented twice: an interim presentation in November and a final presentation in December.

Final Written Exam (50% of the final grade):

This exam will cover all course materials and readings.

The final grade will be a weighted average of the teamwork and the final written exam. The exam is passed if the weighted average is greater or equal to 10.

Retake Exam: In the retake exam, the student will only take a written exam. If the student has obtained a grade greater than or equal to 10 in the teamwork, 50% of the final grade in the retake exam will still be based on the teamwork grade. If the student has failed both the teamwork and the written exam, 100% of the final grade in the retake exam will be determined by the written exam in the second session.

Mark calculation method (including weighting of intermediary marks)

Final Written Exam (50% of the final grade)

Teamwork (50% of the final grade)

Language(s) of evaluation

english