INDICATORS OF SUSTAINABILITY AND INEQUALITY

Course objectives

The aim of the course is to provide students with the necessary skills that, once they are inserted in work contexts such as international organizations, Italian public bodies, in particular belonging to SISTAN, NGOs, private companies, make them able to contribute to the interpretation and analysis of sustainable development processes, through the measurement of interactions between economic, social and environmental phenomena. At the end of the course the student will acquire knowledge and understanding of the systems of indicators developed at international (SDG) and national (BES) level to monitor the achievement of the sustainability objectives, with particular reference to the indicators deriving from the integrated economic and environmental accounting. The acquisition of quantitative assessment tools of sustainability processes will enable the student to perform data analysis in order to understand the interactions between economic, social and environmental phenomena at different spatial scales (international and in particular European, national and sub-national) ). The autonomy of judgment, understood as the ability to elaborate independent judgments on the main issues of sustainability through the statistical tools acquired, as well as the acquisition of autonomous learning abilities, will be developed through the drafting of term papers on some case studies. The oral presentation of these works and the discussion with the class will help the students to develop the ability to communicate information and define problems and solutions in a clear and understandable way

Channel 1
SAMUEL NOCITO Lecturers' profile

Program - Frequency - Exams

Course program
The course consists of two parts that will be held in parallel. Each week there will be two lectures with Prof. Di Dio (Module I) and one lecture with Prof. Nocito (Module II). The course is applied in nature and will introduce students to the construction, evaluation, and use of sustainability and inequality indicators for economic analysis. Lectures will combine theoretical concepts with practical exercises in Excel using real data (ISTAT, Eurostat, World Bank, and other open sources). Module I (Di Dio; 48 hours; 6 ECTS): Content: • Introduction to the course; indicators and measurement. Excel lab: basics (importing data, cleaning, charts). • Measuring climate change (CORE, Unit 1). Lab: average temperatures and emissions (Excel). • Well-being and composite indicators (GDP, components, HDI) (CORE, Unit 4). Lab: HDI and international comparisons. • Inequality: Lorenz curves and the Gini index (CORE, Unit 5). Lab: building Lorenz curves in Excel. • Poverty, multidimensional inequalities, and alternative measures. Lab: Excel dashboard of local indicators (ISTAT/Eurostat). • Willingness to Pay for climate change mitigation (CORE, Unit 11). Lab: microdata analysis and simple regressions in Excel. • Public policies, redistribution, and consensus (CORE, Unit 12). Lab: before/after and differences using administrative data. • Labor market and non-monetary well-being (CORE, Unit 8). Lab: confidence intervals and mean comparisons in Excel. • Corporate sustainability indicators (ESG) and methodological challenges. Lab: sustainability scoring (guided exercise). • Data management: quality, versioning, reproducibility (structured files, notebooks, transformation logs). • Design of the applied project: defining research question, data, indicators; group work. Lab: mock-up of results. • Presentation of projects and critical discussion. Lab: finalization of reports and submission of materials. Module II (Nocito; 24 hours; 3 ECTS), content: • Introduction to the concepts of sustainability in the socio-economic context • Sustainable development and basics of environmental accounting • National and Social Accounting Matrices (NAM and SAM) • Concentration indices (e.g. Gini, Lorenz curve, Herfindahl) • Income distribution and poverty indices • Characteristics and purpose of sustainable development indicators • Composite indicators: identifying dimensions, choosing elementary components, aggregation methods • Equitable and Sustainable Well-being indicators (BES)
Prerequisites
There are no formal mandatory prerequisites for this course, although a basic knowledge of economics and mathematics is an advantage.
Books
• CORE Econ (2024). Doing Economics. Online version available at: https://books.core-econ.org/doing-economics/book/text/0-3-contents.html • Software: Excel (freely available at: https://www.uniroma1.it/it/pagina/microsoft-office-studenti-e-personale-sapienza) • Slides discussed during lectures
Teaching mode
Theoretical and practical analyses through lectures.
Frequency
Optional attendance
Exam mode
The exam will consist of a written test and, if required, a short paper.
Bibliography
• Trasformare il nostro mondo: l'Agenda 2030 per lo Sviluppo Sostenibile. https://unric.org/it/agenda-2030-onu-italia/ • ISTAT, ECONOMIA E AMBIENTE. UNA LETTURA INTEGRATA, Roma, 2021 https://www.istat.it/it/archivio/258752 • OECD (2008) “Handbook on Constructing Composite Indicators. Methodology and user guide”. Disponibile all'indirizzo: http://www.oecd.org/std/42495745.pdf • ISTAT, RAPPORTO BES 2022: IL BENESSERE EQUO E SOSTENIBILE IN ITALIA, Roma, 2023 https://www.istat.it/it/archivio/282920
Lesson mode
Theoretical and practical analyses through lectures.
FABIO DI DIO Lecturers' profile
  • Lesson code10592919
  • Academic year2025/2026
  • CourseInternational Economic and Financial Relations
  • CurriculumSingle curriculum
  • Year3rd year
  • Semester1st semester
  • SSDSECS-S/03
  • CFU9