Topic courses
2025-26
Students may enroll in any of the following topic courses by emailing paolo.brunori@unifi.it indicating the list of topics they intend to take by December 15th. If at least 4 students enroll in a course, they will receive confirmation that the course is activated and they are enrolled. Once enrolled in one course, attendance is mandatory.
| Lecturer | Hours | Topic | Abstract |
| Bardazzi Rosella | 2 | Energy transition and the energy poor households | The linkages between energy transition path and energy poverty is explored. The household sector is a key player in the path toward the decarbonization process: individuals must be engaged in the deep behavioural changes required in this transformation to avoid the risk of being harmed or ‘left behind’. Firstly, energy poverty is defined and its recent trends in the European Union are described. We then briefly outline the main drivers of this multidimensional phenomenon and the most popular indicators, along with their advantages and pitfalls. Finally, we review recent policy developments in the EU aimed at tackling energy poverty and the social implications of the transition to climate neutrality. Based on empirical evidence from the relevant literature, we discuss the extent to which the proposed policies are sufficient to address the rise in energy poverty, or whether more tailored interventions are needed. |
| Bencini Jacopo | 2 | Decarbonizing the global economy through UN negotiations: the (almost) impossible challenge of the climate COPs | After 30 years of Conference of the Parties, trying to concretize the provisions of the 1992 Rio Convention, global GHG emissions are still not declining at the pace the IPCC indicated to contain global warming by 1.5C by the end of the century. Political impasses, diplomatic frictions and a quickly evolving geopolitical landscape are all contributing to making the COP process slow and sometimes byzantine for outside observers, but still, the same process managed to lead to the Paris Agreement, the first of its kind bottom-up international legal instrument in the governance of global public goods. Many factors, however, influence how COPs are tackling the climate crisis, with very different political and policy outcomes every year. In this seminar, participants will have the opportunity to grasp knowledge and intel on how the COPs really work from a climate diplomacy expert who attended more than ten UNFCCC summits. |
| Biancalani Francesco e Gnecco Giorgio Stefano | 6 | Mathematical Methods for Environmental Economics | Causal machine learning (application to policy evaluation of the European emissions trading system); multi-stage games (application to a pricing model for green/non-green products); differential games (application to transboundary pollution and deforestation); cooperative games (application to pollution and fire control) |
| Calogero Vieri | 6 | Economics of Complexity: Theory and Applications | The course examines the concept of Economic Complexity, a framework for indirectly measuring a region's productive capabilities based on the spatial distribution of economic activities. Over the past decade, the study of economic complexity has advanced through significant theoretical and methodological contributions, including the introduction of Relatednes metrics—tools that measure the overall affinity between specific activities and locations to explain path dependency—and the development of Complexity and Fitness metrics. These metrics use data on the geography of activities to estimate the availability, diversity, and sophistication of local capabilities, enabling predictions of future economic dynamics. Economic complexity offers a powerful paradigm for understanding key societal challenges and issues of our time, such as the green transition, development and technological change, income inequality, and productivity polarization. |
| Chironi Daniela | 2 |
The Contentious Politics of Renewable Energy: Territorial Conflicts and Alternatives |
In the context marked by multiple crises, the European Green Deal has regarded the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources as a major solution to climate change. However, the implementation of industrial plants for renewable energy production is increasingly contested as market-driven, investor-led, and incapable of protecting nature. This course will analyse resistance to industrial wind power plants in Europe, drawing on recent empirical analyses of cases in the Mediterranean area and Northern Europe (specifically, the Italian Apennines, Crete, Sardinia, and the Netherlands). To understand this unexpected phenomenon, we will draw on social movement studies, as well as emerging perspectives on green colonialism and green extractivism, energy landscapes, and the geoeconomics of climate change. In particular, we will interpret local mobilisations against industrial wind projects not merely as affected by a NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) syndrome but as LULU (Locally Unwanted Land Use) movements—that is, forms of protest against undesired territorial developments, aiming to grasp not only their motivations but also the alternatives they propose. Why does this matter? First, local mobilisations against renewable energy infrastructures are proliferating across Europe, exposing structural tensions in the green transition such as the commodification of nature, persistent democratic deficits, and renewed centre–periphery divides. Second, by engaging with social movement studies and critical perspectives, the course provides an interdisciplinary framework to connect territorial struggles with broader capitalist dynamics. Third, and most importantly, students will acquire knowledge that can help them envision and plan a more inclusive and democratically governed ecological transition. |
| Clò Stefano | 6 | Energy markets reforms and policy goals: which interplay? | The course explores major reforms in electricity markets, focusing on privatization, liberalization, and low-carbon policies. It examines whether policy goals like decarbonization can be met within reformed markets, emphasizing the government’s role as both regulator and market participant. Students will present papers about government roles in energy markets, focusing on key ideas to cover all topics concisely. |
| Coco Giuseppe | 2 | Imaginary South. Development Policies – A Complex Story | Since the postwar years, Italy has been at the forefront of territorial development policy. Both the extraordinary intervention through the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno and the later New Programming were ambitious, research-based projects—often flawed in execution, but innovative in design. Their roots lie in Italy’s peculiar territorial inequality, shaped by history and geography. European cohesion funds and national reforms have repeatedly faced delays, reallocations, and structural limits. The question is not resources or political will, but why implementation has so often failed. This work reviews key evidence from the literature on territorial and industrial policy, evaluates the effectiveness of EU cohesion measures in Italy, and draws implications for reform. It focuses on five recent tools: tax credits for industrial investment, Special Economic Zones, self-employment schemes (Resto al Sud), social security cuts in the South, and the National Strategy for Inner Areas. These converge today in the experiment of the Single SEZ. Finally, it examines attempts to strengthen infrastructure spending through new agreements between State and Regions—Pacts and Cohesion Accords—as part of a broader rethinking of development policy for the South. |
| Colivicchi Ilaria e Iannucci Gianluca | 8 | Environmental insurance | The overall aim of the course is to introduce a definition of “risk” and provide a methodological framework for its management, presenting models for quantification based on the main risk measures. The insurance market and the role of insurers will be examined, with particular attention to risk transfer mechanisms and to the development of new types of insurance products for the agricultural sector. The program covers the definition, assessment, and management of risk, the study of risk measures, the fundamentals of insurance theory and insurance demand, as well as an in-depth analysis of the market and agricultural insurance policies. Advanced analytical tools such as random forest regression will also be introduced, alongside a case study on parametric insurance for beekeepers and honey production. By the end of the course, students will have gained the ability to understand and manage risks with a specific focus on agricultural insurance coverage. |
| Fana Marta | 2 | The green transition and the labour market | Climate change represents one of the most urgent challenges facing our society, with its environmental and societal effects already being felt. Addressing its negative impacts and steering toward a sustainable future requires urgent policy action worldwide. These socio-economic transformations are reshaping production systems, firm specialization, and organizational structures, which in turn have direct consequences for labour markets. These effects manifest in areas such as employment levels and working conditions. However, conceptualizing and measuring these labour market impacts remains a significant challenge in both academic and policy circles. The dominant framework has focused on "green jobs" and "green skills," defining them by the environmental nature of specific occupations or a worker's skill set. While widely used, this approach has critical conceptual and empirical limitations. For instance, it often identifies green employment in isolation from the worker's actual production process, labeling a worker as "green" regardless of their industry's overall environmental impact. Newer research adopts a more comprehensive view, defining green employment to include workers involved in producing green goods and services, as well as those utilizing environmentally friendly production processes. Furthermore, beyond quantifying the number of workers in green employment, there is a need to better understand the quality of those jobs —encompassing not only wages and skill levels but also broader working conditions and social relations prevailing at the shopfloor and sectoral level. This module will present and critically assess key literature on the conceptualization and measurement of green employment. We will highlight the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches and discuss the data required for measurement at national and European levels. The course will also explore the operationalization of these frameworks using a mixed-methods approach, primarily drawing on quantitative data from different sourced and qualitative insights from case studies. |
| Gil-Hernandez Carlos | 2 | Advances in Social Stratification & Inequality Research | Well-being in advanced societies goes well beyond GDP growth, requiring shared prosperity through low economic inequality and equal opportunity in life chances. This topic course introduces key conceptual and analytical tools to study the stratification of socioeconomic inequalities across post-industrial societies from a sociological perspective. Drawing on advances in quantitative social science, it examines the trends, mechanisms, and institutional factors explaining the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status over the life course, from schools to labour markets, amidst emerging technological and demographic challenges |
| Marcello Daniela | 2 | Sustainable building and green real estate in the European strategy | Europe has a strategic plan in place for dealing with climate change emergencies, and this plan has been significantly strengthened by the European Green Deal. All 27 EU Member States are committed to transforming the EU into the world's first climate-neutral continent by 2050. The real estate sector is also involved in this process. The European Commission's 14 October 2020 communication suggests that approximately 85% of the entire real estate heritage (not including artistic heritage) consists of over 220 million buildings constructed before 2001. These structures are projected to endure until 2050 and beyond. These buildings are not energy efficient; many are heated or cooled by fossil fuels, accounting for around 40% of total energy consumption. For this reason, the European target is to double the annual renovation rate of residential and non-residential buildings by 2030, promoting radical energy renovations in the process. The lessons aim to analyse this European Union's strategy and regulatory framework involved for promoting energy efficiency, building renovations and the deployment of renewable energy in buildings and neighbourhoods. |
| Palencia-Esteban Amaia | 2 | Gender Gaps | Despite substantial progress, gender gaps in labour market outcomes persist. This session will review disparities in job quality, wages, and employment trajectories, exploring several key factors that contribute to these gaps. Discussions will address the influence of educational choices, particularly women’s underrepresentation in STEM fields, as well as occupational and sectoral segregation. We will also examine the role of discrimination and social norms, alongside the significant impact of childbearing and motherhood penalties on women’s labour market experiences. Through these topics, we aim to uncover the root causes of gender disparities and evaluate potential policy solutions. |
| Pazienza Maria Grazia | 2 | University education in prison: A Bridge to Rehabilitation and Social Integration | Access to higher education in prisons is a fundamental element in the process of rehabilitation and social reintegration of inmates. This seminar will explore the multiple dimensions of the importance of higher education in the prison context, analysing both practical and theoretical aspects. University programmes in prisons generate private and external benefits at several levels: as regards the latter, they significantly reduce recidivism rates, increase the chances of finding employment after imprisonment and contribute to improving the climate within prisons, including aspects such as the creation of spaces with characteristics similar to "public goods" and the coexistence of students from different backgrounds, both in terms of criminality and geographical origin. From an individual perspective, access to higher education allows inmates to develop linguistic, critical and relational skills, strengthen self-esteem and maintain a constructive link with the outside world. Last but not least, benefits have also been identified for the university institution itself, both in terms of relationships with very different institutions and for the critical growth of the teachers themselves. University education in prisons is not only a guarantee of the right to education provided by the Italian Constitution, but also a "third mission" action, i.e. an investment by society as a whole. |
| Quagliati Noemi | 4 | Living Under Glass: Architecture and Ecology of the Greenhouse Idea in the Anthropocene | Drawing on the environmental humanities, this course examines the glasshouse as both an architectural typology—emerging from horticultural practice and later adapted to urban contexts—and a metaphor for the human condition in the Anthropocene, shaped by the greenhouse effect and global warming. It traces the evolution of glass as a building material, highlighting its technological innovations and the conceptual and aesthetic ideas that led Le Corbusier to declare “the glass wall the conquest of the Modern Age.” The course explores nineteenth-century botanical gardens in the context of European colonialism, showing how glass shifted from a horticultural to a domestic material, with world’s fairs as testing sites. It then considers twentieth-century modernist and post-war architecture, analysing the rise of glass curtain walls, critiques of their energy inefficiency, and environmental impacts. Finally, it addresses the twenty-first-century “more-than-human turn,” recognising sensory perception and agency in plants and animals, and revealing how glass affects humans and other species differently, for instance through bird collisions with transparent façades. By examining design practices that decentre the human and critically engaging with artificial biospheres on Earth and beyond, the course reflects on what it means to live under glass and reimagines aesthetic, ethical, and sustainable models of cohabitation. This topic course includes an introductory seminar and an excursion to Florence’s Horticulture Garden, focusing on Giacomo Roster’s 1880 tepidarium, which situates the Italian context within the broader Western understanding of the glasshouse. |
| Serti Francesco | 4 | Introduction to Synthetic Control Methods | This seminar explores Synthetic Control Methods (SCM), an empirical approach for causal inference in comparative case studies. SCM constructs a weighted combination of units not exposed to a policy intervention to be used as a counterfactual for those exposed, enabling robust evaluation of policy impacts and interventions. Participants will gain a clear understanding of the methodology, its theoretical foundations, and practical applications, with examples from diverse fields such as economics and social sciences. Synthetic controls have been recognized as a pivotal innovation in policy evaluation, with Susan Athey and Guido Imbens describing them in a recent Journal of Economic Perspectives survey as "arguably the most important innovation in the policy evaluation literature in the last 15 years." Over the past decade, SCM has been used to study diverse policy issues, including the effects of right-to-carry laws (Donohue et al., 2017), immigration policy (Bohn et al., 2014), corporate political connections (Acemoglu et al., 2016), taxation (Kleven et al., 2013), and organized crime (Pinotti, 2015). Beyond academia, SCM has gained significant traction in the popular press and has been widely adopted by multilateral organizations, think tanks, business analytics units, government agencies, and consulting firms. This seminar will equip participants with the tools and insights to apply this cutting-edge methodology to their research and policy evaluations. |
| Vicari Eugenio | 6 | Introduction to Python for LLM Applications | The aim of the course is to introduce doctoral students to Python syntax and core programming concepts, equipping them with the skills to write and interpret code that can interact with large language models (LLMs) through widely used Python packages. Organization: During the first two hours, students will learn how to work with Python both in the cloud and in a local environment, execute basic Python commands, and import functionalities from external libraries. The course will also cover essential programming elements, including data types, functions, control structures (if, else, elif), and loops (for, while). In the following four hours, adopting a learning-by-doing approach, doctoral students, working in small groups, will design and implement applications in which Python is used to call LLMs via current Python packages, and subsequently process and analyze the generated responses. |
| Zambelli Simona | 2 | Title: Financing Innovation for Impact: How Can Capital Shape a Better Future? Rethinking the Role of Finance in Society | Is it possible to rethink finance so that investments deliver more meaningful impact? Is it possible to make investments more impactful? If yes, how? These questions lie at the core of contemporary debates on the future of finance. Innovation, social change, and societal challenges increasingly require capital to be not only financially sustainable, but also able to generate measurable social and environmental benefits. This mini-course invites PhD students to explore the evolving landscape of venture philanthropy and impact investing, two related (yet distinct) concepts that aim to align financial returns with positive societal outcomes. Drawing on insights from the latest research on impact investing, we will examine how these models are reshaping traditional boundaries between profit and purpose. We will discuss their conceptual foundations and current challenges: impact measurement, accountability, and the risks of “greenwashing” and "impact washing". Particular attention will be given to the role of financing innovation in designing solutions to current global societal challenges, and to the opportunities and risks that arise when capital markets engage with the pursuit of social good. The seminar is designed to be interactive, encouraging critical reflection and debate. Students will be invited to question prevailing assumptions about the role of finance in society, and to consider how rigorous research can contribute to the ongoing debate, helping design investment models that genuinely advance a shared social goal. |
Last update
05.11.2025