Document Type

Undergraduate Syllabus

Date

Fall 2017

School

Diplomacy

Course Number

DIPL 4555 AA/ AB

Course Description

Should the U.S. withdraw from NAFTA or renegotiate it? Was it a good idea to withdraw from the TPP? Does immigration hurt native workers in host countries? Will Brexit bring prosperity to the UK? These are all current issues in international economics that directly impact international relations. The answer is, as with the case of most social science questions, "It depends" Economists use frameworks to analyze the underlying processes driving social and economic decisions, such as the decision for a person to migrate or for a firm to offshore. Next, they use these frameworks and empirical evidence to predict the impact of the different policy options, like those above.

Throughout the course, we will use real world and mainly current international issues to learn some key economic principles and apply them to the problem at hand. We will also draw from the research and policy communities to gather empirical evidence to help us decide the answer to questions such as those above. Current debates that we cover include trade patterns and their impact on jobs and wages, global supply chains and their implication for the types of trade agreements and trade policies we see today, why firms offshore (foreign direct investment), immigration and its impact on host and sending countries, whether current trade agreements address labour and environmental standards, and more. We can address these issues through different analytical or disciplinary lenses. In DIPL 4555, we will view these issues through economics lens to identify the mechanisms at works and to use this knowledge to evaluate and design policies.

Prerequisites: ECON 1402. The course build on the microeconomic tools you learnt in ECON 1402.

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