COURSES TAUGHT
Teaching skills
PRINCIPLES OF MACROECONOMICS
This course provides an introduction to macroeconomics - the branch of economics that covers economy wide issues such as employment, inflation, long-run economics vs. short-run economics, etc. Furthermore, this course looks at macroeconomics with two lenses; firstly, the globalized nature of international trade and how that has affected the world and secondly how the advance of globalization has caused economic winners and losers in both the developed and the developing world.
The macroeconomy involves you! I will expect the participants to begin to develop their own perspective on economic issues and be ready to regularly discuss their perspective in an open and respectful environment.
PRINCIPLES OF MACROECONOMICS
Microeconomics is the study of decisions made by people and businesses regarding the allocation of resources, and prices at which they trade goods and services. ... Microeconomics focuses on supply and demand and other forces that determine price levels in the economy.
The microeconomy involves you! I will expect the participants to begin to develop their own perspective on economic issues and be ready to regularly discuss their perspective in an open and respectful environment.
We will look at economics from both a mainstream perspective, as well as looking at various heterodox (non-mainstream) ways of looking at the microeconomy. Each day we will have a ‘Heterodox Half-Hour’, where we look at other perspectives on the subject that we have covered.
MACROECONOMIC THEORY
We have all studied principles of macro, where we look at ways of modelling largescale economic phenomena from a more intuitive perspective. In macroeconomic theory we will continue to look at the same largescale economic phenomena, but now model them more formally using more complex mathematical tools. Each day we will look at how each of our models explains aspects of the economic world we see around us. However, a large part of the class will involve mathematical modelling, so be prepared for that aspect of the class.
GLOBAL CLIMATE INJUSTICE
In this course we will look at the difficult area of global climate injustice. Historically, carbon dioxide has been produced by the stronger and richer industrialized powers, but the major effects of the climate change caused by this carbon production is being experienced by the non-industrialized world. In this course we will look at the disparate effects of global climate change and how it is a factor in changing crop yield, civil war, natural disasters, and an increase in human displacement.
We will then look at various environmental models with which to model this global situation, and see the weaknesses of these models, especially in their lack of ability to model the disparate power dynamics involved in the environmental interaction between the richer and poorer countries.
There will be daily reading and two weekly reflection papers. However, the main output from the course will be some sort of research paper, in which you use the models to look at some aspect of global climate injustice between two, or more, countries.
AFRICAN ECONOMIES
An overall look at the history, present, and future of the fifty-four economies that make up the African continent. Also studying continent wide themes of colonialism, post-colonialism, the Cold War, and the opportunities and challenges of population growth.
This is a vast subject area, so we will concentrate on major themes that affect the entire continent as well as exploring fruitful ways to understand the regional dynamics within the continent. There are many views about Africa, both from internal and external observers, so we will learn to understand the different views, and see their strengths and limitations.
HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT
This course surveys the history of economic thought from a heterodox (i.e., non-mainstream) perspective. We will look at different economic thinkers and how certain ideas have been elevated, but others marginalized. We will look at how the elevation of certain ideas in mainstream economics have been used to justify aspects of the global capitalist system.
We will look at the colonial foundations of the idea of comparative advantage and demonstrate the lack of economic writings on colonialism. We will look at those thinkers that have tackled the idea of colonialism from an economic perspective including Hobson, Lenin, and Luxemburg.
MONEY AND BANKING
This is a course on the economics of money, and banking. The course aims to provide the student with an introduction to the role of money, banks and monetary policy in the economy, thus providing a solid foundation for further study or employment in the banking industry. There will also be an emphasis on the international macroeconomics of currency and the forex markets.
There are three main components of the course. First, the role of financial-especially bond-markets in the economy will be considered with a particular emphasis on interest rate determination. The course will then cover the main aspects of banks before turning to an investigation of the role of money, central banking and monetary policy. Finally, we will look at the basics of international macroeconomics and the dynamics of the forex market.