Intl Econ For Practitioners

1.5 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

The learning objective of this course is to provide foreign affairs practitioners with the skills and knowledge to understand essential issues in international economics empirically, as well as enhance their ability to think about these issues in a structured manner. This course will combine fundamental concepts of international economics, with real-world data, as we will look at some current news articles and information from different countries to concretize our learning. The first part of the course will focus on some key concepts and issues such as national accounts, balance of payments, exchange rates, exchange rate regimes, challenges, and financial crises in countries. Here, we will focus on some pertinent questions such as what causes countries to run trade surpluses or deficits with their trading partners? How are such imbalances resolved over time? What causes banking and currency crises in open economies? In answering all this, we will discuss the role played by exchange rates, and how adopting different exchange rate regimes can fulfill different policy objectives of the countries. The second part of the course will explore international trade theory and policy. We will explore how trade between countries can be explained by differences in comparative advantage, and/or differences in resources that a country is naturally endowed with. We will conclude this course with a final discussion on trade policy and see how countries use tariffs, subsidies, and quotas to influence trade patterns between themselves and their trading partners. Prior study of economics is not a requirement for this course.