Given that the Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance is dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of these subjects, we recommend any and all courses offered by the Economics Department as the first stop for students. This list of courses is designed to highlight each semester those courses taught that are of particular relevance to students who share our interests.
Theory of comparative advantage, trade, and income distribution. Welfare analysis of trade: gains from trade, evaluation of the effects of trade policy instruments-tariffs, quotas, and subsidies. Trade under imperfect competition. Strategic trade policy. Trade, labor markets, preferential trade agreements, and the world trading systems.
This course examines the organization, structure, and performance of the economy of China. Emphasis is placed on the changing economic system including the roles of planning and markets and government economic strategy and policies. The pre-reform period (1949-78) receives attention especially as it influences developments in the market-oriented reform period since 1978. Topics include rural and urban development, industrialization and structural change, rural-urban migration, income inequality and growth, the role of international trade and investment. Both analytical and descriptive methods are used.
For nearly four decades, China and India have been two of the most successful developing economies. Their development strategies are interesting and distinctive in themselves but also in contrast to each other. They have had unique historical legacies, have had their particular colonization experiences, made very different choices immediately after independence (in the case of India) and after the civil war and revolution (in the case of China), and abandoned statism in their own ways in the late 1970s/early 1980s, and are now at different points in their development trajectories with China on the verge of being a superpower if not already one.
For many people, their image of the Caribbean is the tourist brochure and television advertisement representation of sun, sea and sand. This course challenges that through a broad introduction to the real society, economy and politics of the Caribbean region. Using literature, film and traditional texts, it captures the cultural and linguistic complexity of the region through the exploration of a range of central themes such as ethnicity, color, class, politics, as well as more specific, targeted areas including economic inequality, migration, and tourism.
Urbanization has been a driving force behind social change and economic growth. It has also been a deeply political process, in which urban space is distributed and its development subject to state regulation. This course examines the politics of urban development through international comparisons, primarily between the United States and China, but with reference to India and Brazil as well. Addressing in turn land takings, the governance of urban development, and informality in urban development, this course is an opportunity to identify commonalities and differences in urbanization processes across the world. (IAPA Jr seminar)