Off
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Senior
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Economic Data & Resources
Pre-Management /4+1 MBA
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Off
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Past SYE Seminars |
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International Monetary System The international monetary system has been described as the glue that binds national economies together. This seminar will cover the historical evolution of international financial linkages and institutions. We will begin with a discussion of commodity backed monies that for the most part defined monetary economics until the twentieth century. We will examine the gold standard that prevailed under the British leadership of the late nineteenth century. We will then consider the Bretton-Woods system of the mid-twentieth century that tied currencies to one another. We will also discuss current international monetary arrangements and issues such as dollarization and currency unions. We will address international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and the roles that they plan in international financial activities. In addressing these issues will evaluate various exchange rate policies; i.e., fixed, adjustable pegs, managed floats, and freely floating exchange rate regimes.
Checkers, chess, hockey, auctions, divorce trials, international treaty negotiations, teen age dating, collective bargaining, and faculty meetings have something in common.. Each constitutes a situation where two or more "players" match wits, where outcomes depend on player strategies, and where there is significant interdependence between players. "Game Theory", the framework commonly used to analyze such situations, was first developed by Von Neuman and Morgenstern in 1944, and has been refined and extended by others, including John Nash, a Nobel laureate portrayed in the recent movie A Beautiful Mind. Since, in the words of another Nobel Prize winner Paul Samuelson, "to be literate in the modern age you need to have a general understanding of game theory", this course provides an introduction to the theory of non-cooperative games. It then explores applications in the fields of economics, politics, law, and sociology.
Where did modern economics come from? Is the past nothing but the wrong ideas of dead men? Does studying the history of economics make us better economists? Are there alternative approaches to economics? If so, why has history selected away from them? These are some of the questions we will address in this seminar. We will read substantial extracts from some of the great classics in economics, such as Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, as we survey the history of our discipline from its beginnings in ancient Greek philosophy to the age of Keynes. Ultimately the purpose of studying history is to make us more knowledgeable about the present. An important theme of the course will be to relate the seminal ideas of the past to their place in modern economics and to their importance for understanding modern concerns, such as free trade and globalization, development, resource depletion, macroeconomic fluctuations, and theories of normative economics.
This seminar will use economic analysis to study the structure and performance of higher education in the United States. On the demand side, we will use the theory of human capital formation as a basis for measuring the private and social returns to higher education. We will also look at the structure of student finance and how it affects college access, choice, and diversity. On the supply side, we will consider those aspects of the theory of nonprofit institutions that are relevant for understanding the operations of colleges and universities and the markets they operate in. We will address problems associated with the system of faculty tenure as well as those that arise when students are viewed as inputs in the production process and well as consumers. Evaluation will be based on participation in the seminar discussions and an individual research project.
This seminar will introduce students to the applications of experiments in economics: testing institutional designs and economic theories about human behavior. The course consists of three parts. a) we examine the motivation behind experiments, their usefulness and their limitations. b) we revisit theories from other economics classes that are offered at SLU and see how they are tested with experiments. c) in the hands-on part, the class will be divided into groups of three or four, each group chooses a particular field within economics, learns about experimental results in the field it chooses, designs and runs its own experiments and participates in the experiments of the other groups.
Exchange and production in an economy take place within the context of a variety of organizations and institutions. Consider several examples: automobile assemblers often make many of the components they use while personal computer assemblers do so less frequently; self-employment is much more common among professionals than clerical workers; production of manufactured goods is commonly done by corporations while provision of legal services is usually accomplished by a partnership; fast food is often marketed through franchising while apartments are not. This course will study these phenomena and ask how developing informational technologies (such as the internet) will change the nature and very structure of exchange and production. The purpose of the course is twofold: (1) to gain an understanding of the forces that determine the nature of the institutions surrounding transactions and (2) to consider policy implications of the analysis. The Economics of Conflict This is a game theoretic analysis of potential gains from trade between parties
with divergent interests. The principles will be illustrated by playing games
of strategy, and with reference to motion pictures. Topics will include:
coordination without explicit communication, or in the absence of trust; the
credibility of threats, and nuclear deterence.
Economics of Smoking, Drinking and Guns There are many interesting economic, regulatory, and legal issues that can be addressed by examining the markets for alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. We will study how changes in prices, regulations, and other demand factors affect individuals’ behavior and economic outcomes. We will investigate the economics of addiction, discounting the future, and risk perceptions. We also will examine the market structure of these industries and the behavior of firms within the market. Key to understanding both consumer and firm behavior is understanding the regulatory roles of government over these products. Possible regulatory issues to be addressed include excise taxation, direct regulation of firms and consumers, and information provision. Linked to government's roles in these markets are the legal systems dealings with these products, such as governments’ and individuals’ product liability lawsuits against the tobacco companies.
Throughout history and in various parts of the world, there have always been ethnic or religious groups that were more commercially successful and richer than others. Examples include South Asians (Indians) in East Africa, Lebanese in West Africa, ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia, Japanese in South America, Koreans in South Los Angeles. Sometimes success has been credited to either admirable cultural traits or nefarious collusion and exclusionary practices. New Institutional Economics provides another explanation: certain groups are advantaged by social networks that engender trust and allow for the more effective formation and enforcement of contracts. These groups are thus better able to engage in more sophisticated, and more profitable, economic arrangements unavailable to others. This seminar will develop the economics of trust, contracts, and social networks, using case studies to explore if and how social networks can explain the commercial success of certain minority groups.
The world is running out of resources. More and more people in the future will live in “water stressed” nations. Food will become ever more expensive, as will energy and mineral resources. Pollution will kill us, and climate change, species loss, and deforestation will ruin the planet if current trends continue. And it’s all caused by population growth. This is the litany of contemporary Neo-Malthusian environmentalists, but it is nothing new. Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb (1968) or the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth (1972) are in many ways simply reincarnations of Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). Beginning with Malthus’s famous essay, this course will examine the Malthusian worldview and its transition from integral part of economics to outright rejection and rebirth in the writings of some environmentalists. Why this reversal in economics? Is it based on a truism (finite resources must eventually run out)? Or is it susceptible to empirical refutation? These are some of the questions we will address as we progress from Malthus’s Essay to Bjorn Lomborg’s Skeptical Environmentalist (2001). Technological Progress and Economic Growth “Why Are We So Rich and They So Poor?” was the title of an address of the economic historian David Landes to a meeting of the American Economic Association. Since the time of Adam Smith economists have tried to explain the vast differences in economic growth and welfare between and within countries. Many different growth models have been developed over time, each contributing a new facet of understanding and helping to define strategies to foster economic growth. During the last two decades famous economists, like Paul Romer, Elhanan Helpman, Gene Grossman, and Nobel Prize winner Robert Lucas, have introduced a new breed of models that stresses the importance of technological progress. This course provides an introduction into growth models and explores the importance of flows of ideas and technology for increases in welfare. As part of this seminar we will discuss the role of intellectual property rights for research and development and dissemination of knowledge.
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