The student are expected to have a proper knowledge of the global history and to be able to focus on the factors - environment, population patterns, institutions, and social hierarchies- which have been decisive in fuelling the modernization process and the wealth increase experienced by Western economies. In doing this, students are expected to be capable of autonomously describing and analysing those complex processs and to make use of both analytical tools from Economics and notions from other disciplines in Social Science. Furthermore, students are expected to get the capability of examining in depth, arguing and articulating a topic.