This course studies the interaction between law, courts, and social movements in shaping domestic and global public policy. Examines how groups mobilize to use law to affect change and why they succeed and fail. The class uses case studies to explore the interplay between law, social movements, and public policy in current areas such as gender, race, labor, trade, environment, and human rights. Finally, it introduces the theories of public policy, social movements, law and society, and transnational studies.

Lecture Objective: Introduce geography as a potentially deep determinant of growth and expose students to questions in the cutting edge of the field.

The lesson incorporates a few MRU videos about geography and growth from our Principles of Macroeconomics and Development Economics video courses. We also mix in discussion prompts, exercises, practice questions, graphs and charts, and pre- and post-class assignments. Finally, we provide supplementary resources such as additional data sources, relevant news articles and blog posts, and two podcast episodes

Lecture Objective: Introduce students to the super simple Solow model. By the end of the lesson, students should be able to identify inputs to growth, solve for the steady state, and identify the factors that lead to conditional convergence.

The lesson incorporates a number of MRU’s videos about the Solow model and conditional convergence from our Principles of Macroeconomics video course. We also mix in discussion prompts, exercises, practice questions, graphs and charts, and pre- and post-class assignments. Finally, we provide supplementary resources such as additional data sources, relevant articles and blog posts, an episode of Planet Money, and even an interview with Robert Solow himself.

15.015 Macro and International Economics focuses on the policy and economic environment of firms. This subject divided in three parts. The first part of the course is a study of the closed economy and how monetary and fiscal policy interacts with employment, GNP, inflation, and interest rates. Next, the course provides an examination of national economic strategies for development and growth and recent financial and currency crises in emerging markets. Finally, the course addresses the problems faced by transition economies and the role of institutions both as the engine of growth, and as the constraints for policy.

Consumption and savings decisions under certainty and uncertainty. Aggregate savings, wealth, and fiscal policy. Portfolio choice and asset pricing. Investment and finance decisions. Half-term subject. This course covers issues in the theory of consumption, investment and asset prices. We lay out the basic models first, and then examine the empirical facts that motivate extensions to these models.

The basic machines of macroeconomics. Ramsey, Solow, Samuelson-Diamond, RBCs, ISLM, Mundell-Fleming, Fischer-Taylor. How they work, what shortcuts they take, and how they can be used. Half-term subject.

Models of economic growth, old and new. Half-term subject. Introduction to the theories of economic growth. Topics will include basic facts of economic growth and long-run economic development; brief overview of optimal control theory and dynamic programming; basic neoclassical growth model under a variety of market structures; human capital and economic growth; endogenous growth models; models with endogenous technology; models of directed technical change; competition, market structure and growth; financial and economic development; international trade and economic growth; institutions and economic development.

Macroeconomics provides an introduction to economic principles and market forces including supply and demand, unemployment, inflation, international trade and capital flows, monetary policy and banking, fiscal policy and globalization.

This class is a global survey of the great transformation in history known as the "Industrial Revolution." Topics include origins of mechanized production, the factory system, steam propulsion, electrification, mass communications, mass production and automation. Emphasis on the transfer of technology and its many adaptations around the world. Countries treated include Great Britain, France, Germany, the US, Sweden, Russia, Japan, China, and India. Includes brief reflection papers and a final paper.

Everyday we are bombarded with the word "global" and encouraged to see globalization as the quintessential transformation of our age. But what exactly does "globalization" mean? How is it affecting the lives of people around the world, not only in economic, but social and cultural terms? How do contemporary changes compare with those from other historical periods? Are such changes positive, negative or simply inevitable? And, finally, how does the concept of the "global" itself shape our perceptions in ways that both help us understand the contemporary world and potentially distort it? This course begins by offering a brief overview of historical "world systems," including those centered in Asia as well as Europe. It explores the nature of contemporary transformations, including those in economics, media & information technologies, population flows, and consumer habits, not through abstractions but by focusing on the daily lives of people in various parts of the world. This course considers such topics as the day-to-day impact of computers in Silicon Valley and among Tibetan refugees; the dilemmas of factory workers in the US and rural Java; the attractions of Bombay cinema in Nigeria, the making of rap music in Japan, and the cultural complexities of immigrant life in France. This course seeks not only to understand the various forms globalization takes, but to understand its very different impacts world-wide.

Students will use Adobe Spark to create a video commercial after studying market economy.

Seminar designed to provide close case study examinations of specific media or media configurations and the larger social, cultural, economic, political, or technological contexts within which they operate. Subject organized around recurring themes in media history, specific genres or movements, specific media, or specific historical moments. Instruction and practice in written and oral communication. Topic: Comics, Cartoons, and Graphic Storytelling. Meets with CMS.871, but assignments differ.

This course will survey the conditions of material life and changing social and economic conditions in medieval Europe with reference to the comparative context of contemporary Islamic, Chinese, and central Asian experiences. Subject covers the emergence and decline of feudal institutions, the transformation of peasant agriculture, living standards and the course of epidemic disease, and the ebb and flow of long-distance trade across the Eurasian system. Particular emphasis will be placed on the study of those factors, both institutional and technological, which have contributed to the emergence of capitalist organization and economic growth in Western Europe in contrast to the trajectories followed by the other major medieval economies.

Is Mexico the most dynamic economy in Latin America?  After some tough times in the 1980s and 90s, Mexico has emerged as one of the economic leaders of the region.  Where does it stand among other emerging markets and what are its prospects for the future? In this four-week course, we will study the modern Mexican economy, some of the unique elements of development in a one-party, authoritarian regime, and some of the challenges the country faced in getting to this point.

Lecture Objective: Students understand what “there ain't no such thing as a free lunch” really means. In other words, they can identify different types of nonmonetary compensation and how they form part of real wages.

The lesson incorporates two MRU videos about compensating wage differentials from our Principles of Microeconomics video course. We also mix in discussion prompts, exercises, practice questions, graphs and charts, and pre- and post-class assignments. Finally, we provide supplementary resources such as additional data sources, relevant news articles and blog posts, two episodes of Planet Money, and a podcast conversation between Tyler Cowen and Peter Thiel.

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What is Marginal Revolution University (MRU)?

Many of us can remember our first great economics teacher who fundamentally changed how we see the world. At MRU, we try and deliver that experience to millions worldwide through video.

Founded as a nonprofit in 2012 by George Mason University economics professors Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, MRU is building the world’s largest online library of free economics education videos -- currently weighing in at more than 800 videos.

This half-semester course provides an introduction to microeconomic theory designed to meet the needs of students in an economics Ph.D. program. Some parts of the course are designed to teach material that all graduate students should know. Others are used to introduce methodologies. Students should be comfortable with multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and basic real analysis.

This course offers an introduction to noncooperative game theory. The course is intended both for graduate students who wish to develop a solid background in game theory in order to pursue research in the applied fields of economics and related disciplines, and for students wishing to specialize is economic theory. While the course is designed for graduate students in economics, it is open to all students who have taken and passed 14.121. The recommended primary text for the course is Drew Fudenberg and Jean Tirole's text, Game Theory. The text covers all the material in the course and much more, but has less in the way of intuition and examples than some students would like. For this reason, students might alternately wish to use Robert Gibbons' Game Theory for Applied Economists as their primary reference. Gibbons' book contains more readable discussions of the material and a lot of nice examples, but omits a few of the topics we'll cover. The course will be graded on the basis of five problem sets and a three hour final exam. In order to learn the material it is absolutely essential to do the problem sets. The problem sets will count for approximately one-fourth of the course grade.

This is a half-semester course which covers the topics in Microeconomic Theory that everybody with a Ph.D. from MIT Economics Department should know but that have not yet been covered in the Micro sequence. Hence, it covers several unrelated topics. The topics come from three general areas: Decision Theory, Game Theory, and Behaviorla Economics.  I will try my best to put them in a coherent narrative, but there will be inherent jumps from topic to topic.

Microeconomics provides an introduction to economic principles and market forces including supply and demand, labor and financial markets, elasticity, consumer choices, cost and industry structure, competition, monopoly, negative and positive externalities, economic inequality, financial markets, international trade, globalization and protectionism.

Microeconomics will ground you in - surprise - basic microeconomics-how markets function, how to think about allocating scarce resources among competing uses, what profit maximizing behavior means in industries with different numbers of competitors, how technology and trade reshapes the opportunities people face, and so on. We will apply economic ideas to understand current economic problems, including the housing bubble, the current unemployment situation (particularly for high school gradutes), how Google makes its money and why healthcare costs are rising so fast.