ECS-3003.U01
Comparative Economic
Systems
Prof. Alan Gummerson
Fall, 2015
Syllabus
Texts
Krugman, Paul.
End This Depression Now!
2013. Paperback. Norton ISBN 978-0393345087
Additional
readings will be online.
Grades
Grades
will be based on three exams, of equal weight, to be held in class on
September 24 (11am), October 29 (11am), and December 10 (at
9:45am).
Exams
will cover what we have read and discussed in class, and may include essays,
short answers, and/or multiple choice questions.
Course
objective: Our main goals will be to
increase our understanding of how modern capitalist economies work, to better
understand how such economies can fall into crises, to understand what kind of
policies can alleviate such crises, to understand what kind of policies can
fail to alleviate or even aggravate such crises, and to get a grasp of how the
global capitalist economy functions.
Paul KrugmanÕs End this Depression Now! will be the main text for this course. The book addresses all of the course
objectives described in the previous paragraph.
Supplementary readings:
For free access to the New York Times (for reading
KrugmanÕs op-ed columns on Mondays & Fridays: nytimes.com/passes Use your fiu.edu email address.
KrugmanÕs very useful blog is at
Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
Slides on Labor Market,
11/11/15
Gummerson, Monetary Policy in a Liquidity Trap
Slides from Class on Money, Interest, Prices
Blinder and Zandi, The Financial Crisis: Lessons for the Next One
Bernstein on Blinder and Zandi
Chart
Book: The Legacy of the Great
Recession—Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Paul Krugman on Charlie Rose: The Current World Situation
Martin Wolf on Charlie Rose: The Crisis and the Future
Krugman on Ricardian Equivalence
Krugman on Liquidity Trap,
Loanable funds
The
Gold Standard and the Depression
Koo: The World in Balance Sheet Recession (slides)
Stockman, State-Wrecked: The Corruption of Capitalism in
America
After we finish the Krugman book we will take up some
or all of the following topics, time permitting:
China and the World Economy
China: Taking a Tumble. The Economist, 27 Aug 2015
Lecture on Balance of Payments
Eurocrisis
While the Krugman book addresses this issue, we will
update his analysis with more recent articles, which will be posted here:
Secular Stagnation
This term refers to the notion that the advanced economies may have
entered a period of long-term low growth, due to factors such as the slow
growth of population and the depletion of investment opportunities, among
others. Readings for this topic
will be posted here:
*Demography and Secular Stagnation,
The Economist, 22 Nov 2014
*Secular Stagnation: Facts, Causes, and Cures. Coen Teulings, Richard Baldwin 15 August 2014 Chapters by Summers,
Eichengreen, & Krugman
A Model of Secular Stagnation (Abridged)
Video of Larry Summers on Secular Stagnation at London School of
Economics. Google LSE podcasts.
Find January 20, 2015 podcast.
Automation/Robots
The
fear that computers are taking jobs away from humans is widespread. We will investigate the merits of the
idea, with readings posted here:
*The Economist, Wealth Without Work, 4 October 2014
The Economist, The Third Great Wave, 4 October 2014
* Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer, 2015
articles by Autor and Mokyr
Inequality of Income and Wealth
Perceived
growing inequalities in capitalist economies has risen to be a political issue
in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere.
We will examine the data on the distribution of income and wealth in the
U.S., and look at possible ways of addressing the problem, with readings posted
here:
*Krugman on PikettyÕs
Capital in the 21st Century
*Piketty on AtkinsonÕs Inequality
Students should
become aware of FIUÕs definitions of and policies toward academic misconduct.
The UniversityÕs policies may be found on the FIU web-site at:
Code of Academic Integrity
and Academic Misconduct.