Professor James Galbraith, galbraith@mail.utexas.edu
Wednesdays 9-12, by Zoom
Electronic Office hours: Tuesday 2 – 4 PM or by email appointment
Assistant: Jayashree Vijalapuram: jayashreev@austin.utexas.edu
Teaching Assistant: TBD
This class will cover a number of issues in international economic policy, organized loosely into three categories: trade, finance and development. My approach is eclectic, historical, institutional and evolutionary. We will touch on some of the classic sources, including Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Veblen, and Keynes, and build from there. This is a class primarily for first year students. No prior exposure to economics is required or assumed.
The work-load for this course consists of three parts: reading, writing, and class participation. Reading is fairly heavy. Each week, each student prepares a one-page “reading response” – a reflection on the readings with reference to previously-held views, any relevant personal experience, and questions. Each response is due just before class begins. There is no precise format for this exercise; they are not graded individually, but quality is noted. I provide a brief comment and return these responses. As the class is conducted over Zoom, students are expected to attend with cameras on.
An indicative list of themes follows:
International Trade.
- The origins of capitalism in new technologies and new territories.
Pre-capitalist economies in China, Europe and the Americas. The rise of capitalism on the periphery of feudalism. Conquest, piracy, trade, and the mercantilist viewpoint. Labor systems, including serfdom and slavery. The evolution of key technologies: printing, shipbuilding and firearms.
- Industrialization, trade, and the liberal view of markets.
Enclosures, free wage labor and the creation of a working class. Industrialization, surplus-value, and the problem of markets for industrial goods. The economics of empires and colonies, wars, and the rise of welfare states as a solution to the problem of effective demand.
- Free Trade and Protectionism.
The politics of the tariff question from the Corn Laws to the American Civil War. The doctrines of free trade and comparative advantage. Increasing returns, protectionism and industrial policy in the development strategies of late-industrializing and socialist countries.
- World Trade in Theory and Practice
The end of the imperial systems and the rise of global governance. The Havana treaty, the GATT, and the WTO. The rise of regional trading blocs: the EU, NAFTA, TPP/TTIP, the SCO. Bilateral agreements as a US trading strategy. Intellectual property rights and investor protections as goals of trade agreements. The China model, including capital controls and the BRI.
International Finance
- Money and Debt in International Relations
Basics of money, banking and credit. Financial instability from Babylon to Minsky. The history of credit and credit crises from tulips and the South Sea Bubble to the Great Financial Crisis.
- Monetary Standards and Exchange Rate Regimes
Gold and Silver standards. The Keynes Plan and Bretton Woods. The IMF and the World Bank. The Marshall Plan, debt forgiveness, regulation, and the making of the post-war world. Floating exchange rates and the de facto dollar standard after 1981. Dutch disease. The rise and stagnation of the euro system. The end of the West and the rise of the rest... or maybe not?
- Global Finance in the Modern World.
The US regulatory system from the New Deal to deregulation. Fraud and financial crises: Savings and Loans, Enron, the Great Financial Crisis, and how the GFC spread from the US to the world. European ordo-liberalism and its consequences. Austerity and its aftermath: the US, Greece, Italy. Derivatives, sanctions, cryptocurrencies, and potential break-points in the present-day financial system.
Economic Development
- Classic and Near-Modern Development Ideas
Marx and dialectical materialism; Schumpeter and creative destruction. Cold war development economics, especially Walt Rostow and the theory of take-off. Albert Hirschman on uneven development and the tunnel effect. Poverty as underdevelopment.
- Modern and Critical Development Ideas.
Development and destruction. The problems of wealth and affluence.
10. Neoliberal Development Policy
Recent neoliberal development ideas including conditional cash transfers, microfinance and randomized controlled trials.
11. Development and Inequality
Measures of development, The Kuznets Hypothesis. The global dynamics of inequalities.
12. The End of Globalization and Development?
13. Conflict, Limits to Growth, Resources and Climate Change