Econ for the Study of Politics

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

Economic concepts and tools are increasingly useful for the study of political phenomena, including elections, social policy, public good provision, civil conflict, party competition, among others. Indeed, in many cases is difficult to disentangle political issues from closely-related economic ones. For example, it is impossible to understand class-based politics without the studying economic inequality. This course is especially designed for graduate students interested in acquiring economic tools to better understand current debates in political science and development. The course assumes limited to no exposure to economics in their undergraduate education and will actively seek to link economic concepts / tools to its most common applications in other disciplines. We will start with basic concepts such as supply and demand analysis and cover a range of other concepts in macroeconomics, microeconomics and international economics such as: • Tax incidence and its applications to social policy. • Welfare analysis, Externalities – as applied to environmental policy and public good provision. • Firm production and Market Structure (Monopoly, Oligopoly and Perfect Competition) and the study of political competition. • Markets for labor – applied to the study of labor policy • Markets for capital – sovereign debt markets and banking systems • Macro-measurement: GDP, Unemployment, Inequality • Theories of International Trade and their application to the “Resource Curse” and “Infant Industry” arguments • Monetary policy and Fiscal policy – ‘Shock Therapy’ and debt crisis. • International finance and exchange rate regimes – and their relationship to currency crises The overall goal of the course is to link these topics to issues of special interest to government and international politics students while acquiring key tools for the analysis and interpretation of economic phenomena.