Required Courses

Economics Department course descriptions.

Economics Department course descriptions.

This course introduces undergraduate majors to some of the main economic tools and analytical methods available in the economic analysis of politics. The course touches on many areas in political economy including international political economy, economics and philosophy, and law and economics.

This course introduces students to the question of how different modern Western societies and thinkers have defined the relationships between political and economic activities. Beginning with the experience of Europe in the 15th century, it examines what the unprecedented wealth of modern Western societies has meant for the understanding and practice of politics. It also explains what caused the economic abundance of Western nations to come into being in the first place, and how that abundance has been sustained over time.

This course presents an integrated study of the main alternatives in political ideology (liberalism, socialism, fascism, Marxism) advocated in the modern world and the exemplifications of these ideologies in practice in the modern world (post-war West Germany, 20th-century Britain, Mussolini’s Italy, the Soviet Union).

Virtually all contemporary economies are characterized by extensive relations between the economic and political systems. Furthermore, these relations seem to involve often complex relations between the global, national, and sub-national political economies. This fact is currently referred to as “globalization”. However, it is clear that globalization, whatever it is, has different effect on national (and sub-national) political economies. In this course, we will: 1) attempt to develop an understanding of globalization; 2) develop a comparative analysis of the links between globalization and national outcomes; and 3) examine the international institutions that attempt to manage globalization. Because time is finite, and there are other courses, we will focus primarily on advanced democracies.

Prerequisite: Economics 3010.

The political economy majors seminar focuses on a large theme or question that no single discipline in the program uniquely claims for its own and no one approach exhausts. Examples of such issues: the rise of the nation-state, capitalism and democracy, the political economy of industrializing America, the foundations of economic change, the political economy of globalization.

In designing a majors seminar, Murphy Institute faculty explore issues that currently most engage them as scholars and that sustain a coherent cross-disciplinary course offering.

Economics Department course descriptions.