Teaching

This course introduces the fundamentals of microeconomics and their relationship to the domestic and international economy. We learn the basic analytic tools of modeling and critical thinking. By the end of the term, students have developed their abilities to apply and interpret economic principles of supply and demand, competition, and market structure in the analysis of market economies, including in the context of international trade, market failures, and environmental policy.

This course will introduce students to the study of macroeconomics. Students will learn how major economic indicators are calculated. Students will learn how economists define investment and the role that it plays in driving the business cycle. Students will also learn how to evaluate the effects of economic scenarios on prices, production, and expenditures. The scenarios include changes in interest rates, expectations about the economy, input prices, technological growth, fiscal and monetary policy, as well as changes in economic conditions in other countries. Students will learn about different perspectives in macroeconomics. Finally, students will learn how they both affect and are affected by, global economic events. 

This course introduces students to mathematical language and techniques to formulate and solve problems in economics. For this purpose, the covered topics are linear algebra, differential calculus, and constrained optimization. The intent is to cover these mathematical concepts in the context of their applications to economics. 

In this course, I present a “post-Walrasian” view of the economy that emphasizes situations in which individual utility-maximization fails to generate efficient equilibria. The course presents coordination failures as a pervasive feature of capitalist economies. We study the evolution of norms and preferences, incomplete contracts, and their implications for general equilibrium theory while introducing the concept of exploitation and its role in rising inequality.

Theories of various industrial organizational structures and problems are developed, including monopoly, oligopoly, nonlinear pricing and price discrimination. These theories are used to model various industries, antitrust cases, and regulatory issues.

In this course, students are exposed to statistical analysis from the lens of an economist. Students learn graphical and numerical methods of summarizing data, the concept of probability, and hypothesis testing. These skills are useful in a wide range of contexts, ranging from reading and interpreting news articles critically, becoming an educated consumer, evaluating policies, and getting prepared for advanced courses in quantitative analysis. This course belongs to the category of Quantitative Reasoning (QR-B) courses.

This course surveys the origins and development of economic theory from Adam Smith to Keynes. Emphasis is placed on the classical political economists, Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, and Marx, and the marginalist revolution, including the works of Walras, Jevons, Menger, and Clark.

This is a critical class in which we consider how Karl Marx addressed two important problems raised by the economists of his time: the basis of the theory of value and the origin of profit. Next, the class will consider other aspects of Marx's thought and how they contrast with some of the basic topics taught in Principles of Microeconomics and Principles of Macroeconomics.

This course studies various economic and political systems, concentrating attention on the economic paradigms of Capitalism and Socialism. The course moves from a historic study of various economic and political systems to analysis of modern systems.