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Course Criteria
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4.00 Credits
This course focuses on the economic forces and public policies that affect employment and wages, and examines theoretical models of labor markets and how well they hold up to real-world empirical data. Topics emphasized include labor demand and supply, minimum wage laws, theories of unemployment, job search and matching models, family and life-cycle decision making, human capital, efficiency wage theory, compensating wage differentials, worker mobility and migration, unions, and discrimination. Prerequisite: Economics 101.
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4.00 Credits
An exploration of the economic structure and functions of local and state governments in a federal system, with a focus on the United States. Topics include local public goods; public choice; fiscal federalism; taxes and revenues; demand, supply, and pricing of state and local services; public education; transportation; the budget process; regional development; and assorted policy issues. Prerequisites: Economics 101, 202, and 237.
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4.00 Credits
This seminar contrasts the academic analysis of financial economics with the coverage it receives in the newspapers and on the nightly newscast. The stories on the news are almost always connected with people, whether we observe them shouting bids on a trading floor or talking on two phones simultaneously. Financial markets are dominated by people behaving in many different ways. Yet traditional finance theories concentrate on efficient markets, predictable prices that are determined by the concepts of present value, rates of return, and analysis and pricing of computable risks. Human behavior has neither a place in the theory nor a need to be studied. This prevailing view has recently been challenged by the new paradigm of behavioral finance that considers the many anomalies of "rational"behavior and "efficiency" of markets. The seminarexamines the influence of economic psychology in the decision-making process of various agents as well as in the market's dynamics. Prerequisites: Economics 101 and 102 or permission of the instructor.
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4.00 Credits
What is a just way of distributing the goods and resources of society? How do various ideals of justice interact with economic realities? Are there important distinctions to be made among the concepts of justice, fairness, equity, and equality? Some writers argue for an ideal of equal opportunity, while others prefer the notion of equality of outcomes. This course focuses on these questions as applied to the United States. It examines not merely issues of values, but also matters of historical/political fact: What is the current distribution of wealth in this country? What has it been in the past? How did we come to have the tax (and subsidy) system that we have? In short, we consider interrelated issues of fact and value, of ideals and the possible, of philosophy and economics and history. Authors studied include John Stuart Mill, Richard Musgrave, Robert Nozick, John Rawls, and Amartya Sen. Prerequisites: at least one related course in philosophy, economics, or a related area and permission of the instructor.
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4.00 Credits
Environmental Studies The course first defines a collective decision, then classifies and evaluates the modes of collective decision making. It then develops the idea that while the possible ways in which citizens may vote are much more varied than might be expected, it is important to understand what voting cannot do in order to derive the most benefits from it. The limitations of voting are developed through discussions of cycles, the Arrow theorem, and the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem. Prerequisite: eligibility for Q courses.
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4.00 Credits
An introduction to historical and contemporary views of the methodology and philosophy of economic science. Works of Popper, Mill, Cairnes, Robbins, Hutchison, Friedman, Hayek, Caldwell, Blaug, and others are reviewed. Topics include normative versus positive science; induction and deduction; positivism and falsification; the role of assumptions in economic theory; and the nature of economic discourse. The focus is on a methodological appraisal of the neoclassical research program. Prerequisites: Economics 201 or 202, 210, and 299.
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4.00 Credits
Social Policy, STS This course applies economic tools to an understanding of the peculiar features of health care and related markets. It begins by reviewing the demand and supply for health outputs, and then considers various methods for measuring the costs and benefits of health outcomes. Subsequent topics address the information asymmetries in health services and insurance; the market for private health insurance (including managed care); features of physician and other labor markets; reasons for and effects of social insurance programs; and questions surrounding U.S. health care reform, including spiraling costs and incomplete access to care.
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4.00 Credits
A critical survey of several schools of thought that challenge the mainstream neoclassical school. Approaches encountered include the Austrian, institutionalist, feminist, humanist, geoclassical, foundationalist, postmodernMarxist, and Virginia schools of economic thought. An examination of their various research agendas, methodologies, ideologies, principles, values, and factual claims throws fresh light on the strengths and weaknesses of the dominant paradigm itself. Prerequisites: Economics 201, 202, and 210.
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4.00 Credits
Students writing Senior Projects in economics are required to attend the Senior Conference, which meets not more frequently than one evening every two weeks throughout the fall and spring terms. All core faculty of the Economics Program participate. Not for credit.
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4.00 Credits
Weekly screenings and lectures explore films by Chaplin, Deren, Griffith, Hitchcock, Keaton, Renoir, and Rossellini, among others. Students also read theoretical works by authors such as Arnheim, Bazin, Eisenstein, Munsterberg, Pudovkin, and Vertov.
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