PhD organisation

The PhD is designed as a three-year programme, comprising activities as different as:

• lectures and seminars;
• research work and other academic activities;
• research papers' production;
• preparetion and defence of the final dissertation.

The first year is mainly devoted to teaching. PhD students are required to attend ten blocks of lectures and seminars dealing with:

• data analysis and statistical techniques;
• poverty, inequality and their interaction with growth;
• development microeconomics;
• development macroeconomics;
• public economics;
  
• agricultural economics;
• industrial economics with a special focus on small and medium enterprises;
• international economics;
• research methodology.

During the first year, the PhD students are also required to complete their first research paper and start working on the second one as well.

The second and third years are strongly focused on research. In the course of the second year, the PhD students are expected to finalise their second paper and prepare a third paper, which is meant to be related to their final thesis. Finally, the third year will be largely devoted to writing, finalising and submitting the final PhD dissertation. In the second/third year, PhD students are expected to spend a period of time in a developing country undertaking their own fieldwork.

For a detailed description of the PhD organisation, please see Structure and Curriculum.

Most senior lecturers teaching on the PhD course are members of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Florence, while several guest lecturers come from other important Italian and foreign Universities. Besides, many lecturers carry out theoretical and applied work in research centres and international organisations all around the world, working on various development issues.