Course Description and Learning Outcomes:
We are quite simply living in extraordinary times. Grand challenges such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, democratic backsliding, inequality, and political polarization are threatening many assumptions that we likely have all made about the sustainability of our way of life. Given their scale and scope, any attempt to address these issues will necessarily involve both the private and public sectors and may require us to reimagine the roles of both capitalism and the state.
To help you appreciate and weigh responses to these and other policy challenges, this course will encourage you to ruminate on the relationship between business and government by providing you with an understanding of how each influences the other and to encourage you to think critically about the proper balance between the two. Within the context of the United States, we will focus on analyzing interactions between businesses and their external stakeholders, including elected officials, regulators, the mass public, public interest groups, NGOs, and activists. Although the ultimate objective of the course is to prepare you to develop and implement political or “nonmarket” strategies for a firm or industry, you will learn to do so in a manner that is both legally and ethically sound.
The course is divided into five parts; as we complete each in order, you will be able to:
Use the tools of public economics to understand the nonmarket environment of the firm and the relationship of a firm’s nonmarket environment to its market environment; Employ the tools of political economy to assess and analyze the issues and actors a firm engages with in its nonmarket environment, as well as Formulate a nonmarket strategy for a firm on a given issue; Apply legal and ethical reasoning to define the constraints on and resolve dilemmas involved in designing and implementing a nonmarket strategy; and Combine all of the above to evaluate the efficacy of different nonmarket tactics.
Assessment TBD