ENROLL

Andy Morrison

Latin America has the highest level of inequality in the world, undergirded by significant racial, ethnic, and gender inequalities. This course will analyze key gender issues such as violence against women and women’s labor force participation. We will also examine issues affecting indigenous peoples from both a human capital and indigenous rights/development with identity framework. The focus will be on rigorous analysis to understand the problems and design better public policy.

Prerequisite: Economics 111

Victor Almeida

This course provides a historical perspective on financial crises and highlights their main empirical patterns. This course also introduces economic theories of financial crises, in which leverage, moral hazard, mistaken beliefs, and coordination problems play a central role. We will also discuss some policy instruments used to balance risk exposure, such as deposit insurance, collective action clauses, exchange controls, and foreign reserves.

Prerequisite: Economics 110 and 111

Nathan D Grawe

Prerequisite: Economics 111

Yingtong Xie

This course investigates decision-making by firms and their managers. Specific topics include tradeoffs in corporate organization, executive compensation, project valuation, the cost of capital under debt and equity financing, and the firm’s optimal capital structure. 

Prerequisite: Economics 110 and 111

Huan Gao

Tocqueville once remarked, “if men who live in democratic countries did not acquire the practice of associating with each other in ordinary life, civilization itself would be in peril.” Today, our lives are affected by a wide spectrum of these associations of ordinary life from the Catholic Church, to international NGOs like Greenpeace, to mundane neighborhood groups. This course investigates whether these organizations can help solve some of the most pressing global challenges like climate change, inequality, and epidemics. We will engage classic literature about civil society, study contemporary organizations and movements, and think critically about their political, social and economic impact.

Juan Diego Prieto

During COVID-19, many countries adopted new cash transfers, wage subsidies, and basic income experiments, among other innovative social policies, prompting major debates on the need to transform existing social protection systems. We will examine the origins and evolution of formal welfare institutions in the global north and south, with an intersectional focus on their consequences for diverse groups. We will also explore how non-state actors contribute to the construction and maintenance of social safety nets around the world. Based on these insights, we will consider how states, markets, families, and communities may shape the future of welfare states.