ECO 495 - Senior Session

This Senior Seminar is required of all seniors majoring in economics. Students demonstrate their abilities to engage in economic analyses using the tools developed in their intermediate-level courses by participating in colloquia on economic problems, theory, and policy. Exploiting the seminar nature of the course, students will write, edit, and revise convincing professional economic arguments; they take the ETS Major Field Test in Economics and an oral examination conducted by an external examiner; and hear from guest speakers about their research and policy interests.

Prerequisites & Notes: 
Successful completion of Economics 202, 203, and 205 are prerequisites for registering for the course. Under exceptional circumstance, following a student request, the Chair of the Department may waive one of these requirements.

FALL 2019 SENIOR SEMINARS

Section B: Contemporary Issues in Economics
Instructor: Gouri Suresh

The objective of this course is to conduct a close study of selected economics research publications in terms of their theories and empirical approaches. Over the course of the semester, five papers and one book will be chosen jointly by the students and the professor based principally on the criteria of timeliness and timelessness. “Timely” papers will be chosen from recent issues of the Journal of Economics Perspectives and the Oxford Review of Economic Policy. “Timeless” topics will be chosen from a list of papers widely accepted as classics in the field. Students will read, analyze, discuss, and write about these papers and the book in various ways - response papers, op-eds, book/article reviews, and policy briefs. Students will also conduct an empirical exercise on a topic chosen collectively in class.

Prerequisites: Eco 202, Eco 203, Eco 205.

SPRING 2020 SENIOR SEMINARS

Section A: US Income Inequality
Instructor: Ross

This course will explore the degree of inequality (income- pre and post- tax and transfer, wealth, and education) found in the United States since its founding during the Colonial period. We will discuss the sources of these inequalities, as well as the implications and consequences from them.

Section B: Eco Foreign Direct Investment
Instructor: Stroup

Multinational firms with operations spanning national boundaries are some of the most powerful companies in the world. Why do some firms go global? What prevents others from internationalizing their operations? How do multinationals innovate? Do they benefit the countries where they operate? Answers to these questions will help us understand the world we live in, and we will use economics to examine these and other issues to learn how firms respond to the pressures of globalization and how the global presence of these firms affects our well-being.

Section C: “Great” Books in Economics
Instructor: Jha

This course will survey the great thinkers, their seminal ideas, and the great texts of economic thought in the history of the discipline. Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” changed the world, with a basic trinity of individual prerogatives: self-interest division of labor, and freedom of trade. But what, according to Smith, was a `well-governed society’ and what were the limits of reason and rationality? What were Keynes’s views on ‘animal spirits’, the spontaneous optimism rather than mathematical speculation, that drove human action? How did Marx distinguish between fixed or constant drives integral to human nature and the relative appetites rooted in particular social structures and modes of production? And what, according to Michael Sandel, are the moral limits of markets? The objective of this course is to conduct a close study of select “great texts” in economics, focusing on classics in economic thought supplemented with contemporary analyses.

Section D: The Geography of Prosperity
Instructor: Smith

Why is North Korea’s economic output per person a fraction of South Korea’s? Why did the Industrial Revolution begin in England? This course will examine competing theories behind why some societies have enjoyed economic success while others have not. Special attention will be paid to understanding the role of economic institutions and the role of geography in generating long run economic prosperity.

Section E: Milestones in Economic Thought
Instructor: Kumar

Advances in economic thought have emerged not as inevitable products of preceding orthodoxies but from highly contested and intensely debated alternatives rooted in particular historical-social-political realities. In this course we study the evolution of economic ideas by inquiring into such historical-social-political contexts of key advances - milestones in economic thought - from Mercantilism to the ascent of Keynesianism. These milestones occurred as the Physiocrats rebelled against Mercantilism and inspired Adam Smith and Classicalism, as the Classicals confronted challenges from Marxism and Socialism, and as Marginalism and the Neoclassicalism coopted or deflected these challenges. We study how, from the ideas and times of the great thinkers, emerged milestones in economic thought that shaped the current discipline of Economics.

Section H: Honors Thesis
Instructor: Foley

Completion of the honors research proposed in Economics 494 (section H), including estimation of the empirical models, interpretation and discussion of the results, and a concluding section. Oral defense of the thesis is required. Students will also take comprehensive exams in microeconomic and macroeconomic theory, ETS Major Field Test in Economics and an oral examination conducted by an external examiner.

Pass in Economics 494 and permission of the Department Chair. (Spring)