Global Arc

This course introduces students to basic concepts from the study of public policy. It will serve as an introduction into SPIA and the many disciplines that make up its faculty. The course is designed to familiarize students with the broader issues involved in analyzing, designing, and implementing public polity. The course will a) introduce students to three approaches that policy makers use to design and evaluate policy; and b) allow students to apply these abstract notions to a variety of policy debates.

Examination of the causes and economic consequences of international trade in goods and services, investment and migration. Stress on the possibility of aggregate national gains from trade, and the distributional conflicts generated by trade. Analysis of policies regarding these issues from the perspective of economics and political economy. Two lectures, one preceptorial. Prerequisites: WWS 100 or ECO 300 or ECO 310.

This course will focus on less developed countries and will consider topics such as economic growth and personal well-being; economic inequality and poverty; intra-household resource allocation and gender inequality; fertility and population change, credit markets and microfinance; labor markets and trade policy. It will tackle these issues both theoretically and empirically.

Microeconomics studies individual choices under constraints, and how these interact with one another to produce economic outcomes. We focus on how microeconomics can help us understand the effects of alternative public policies. We begin by studying how individuals and firms make consumption, labor, and production decisions, how consumers and firms interact in a competitive market, and how taxes and regulations affect market outcomes. Prerequisite: ECO 100. This course is not open to students who have taken ECO 300 or ECO 310.

The standard model used in economics is that of perfectly rational agents endowed with unlimited cognitive resources. However, there are many cases in which human behavior systematically differ from this benchmark. The goal of this class is to discuss these cases: when do they tend to occur, what form do they take, how to model them. We will discuss how people relate to the presence of risk, intertemporal choice, fairness, complexity, etc. For each topic, we will discuss the empirical evidence and leading models. Overall, this class will offer an introduction to one of the most exciting areas of research in economics.

An introduction to the use of economics in thinking about and dealing with environmental issues. Stress on economic externalities and the problem of dealing with them as instances of organizing gains from trade. Applications to a wide variety of problems, among them air pollution (including, importantly, global climate change), water pollution, solid waste and hazardous substances management, species preservation, and population policy.

Twenty years after the September 11th terrorist attacks, America's national security regime continues to be shaped by an indefinite "War on Terror," notwithstanding the death of Osama Bin Laden, the U.S. military's withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq, and the effective defeat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The laws and policies passed over the past two decades have generated heated debates on how to balance individual rights with national security priorities. This course examines in depth these debates through a survey of select post-9/11 national security laws and policies and their impact on civil liberties.

Military strategy was defined by Clauswitz as the use of battle to achieve the objectives of war. Grand strategy is broader, encompassing the attempted use by political leaders of financial economic, and diplomatic, as well as military, power to achieve their objectives in peacetime and in war. This seminar will examine the theory and practice of grand strategy both to illuminate how relations among city-states, empires, kingdoms and nation states have evolved over the centuries and also to identify some common challenges that have confronted all who seek to make and execute grand strategy, from Pericles to Barack Obama.

This course will review and analyze the foreign policy of the People's Republic of China from 1949 to the present. It will examine Beijing's relations with the Soviet Union, the United States, Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Third World during the Cold War, and will discuss the future of Chinese foreign policy in light of the end of the Cold War, changes in the Chinese economy, the post-Tiananmen legitimacy crisis in Beijing, and the continuing rise of Chinese power and influence in Asia and beyond.

Disruption across the globe has place U.S. diplomacy in the spotlight in the spotlight. What are the secrets to the art of diplomacy at the highest levels? What have been the great successes and failures of American statecraft? What is the proper role of the U.S. in the world today?