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 2020 SENIOR SEMINARS

Section A: 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.

Section B: Climate Change and Covid 19
Instructor: Martin

Two of the most pressing issues facing college-aged youth today are climate change and COVID-19. The focus of this seminar is a crucial one for policy analysts: are there useful parallels and/or intersections between potential responses to those two problems? After discussing some economic analyses of the two issues separately so you can learn the relevant basic concepts, we as a group will explore the recently developing literature that looks at possible parallels and intersections. The course will conclude with each of us presenting our answer to our focal question.

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.

Satisfies a major requirement in Economics

Satisfies a minor requirement in Economics

Spring 2021

ECO 495 Senior Session

Section A: “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, 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 that are integral to human nature and the relative appetites that are rooted in particular social structures and modes of production? How did Polanyi contrast rational self-interested behavior in the market society of early modern Western Europe with socially motivated behavior in the communitarian patterns of organization in traditional societies? 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 B: Behavioral Economics

Instructor: M. Foley

Incorporation of psychological insights into economic models, with emphasis on empirical evidence. Analysis of how individuals depart from a standard economic model in three ways: 1) nonstandard preferences, such as a bias toward the present relative to the future or reference-dependent preferences, 2) nonstandard beliefs, such as overconfidence about one’s ability or assuming current preferences are static, and 3) nonstandard decision making, such as framing effects and the roles of social pressure and peer influences.

Section C: Migration
Instructor: Gouri Suresh

The economic consequences of migration are the subject of intense political debate globally. In this course we will study this issue from several different perspectives. In terms of methodology, we will employ techniques and models from microeconomics, macroeconomics, and econometrics. In terms of focus, we will look at the issue from the perspective of migrants and the perspective of non-migrants in both migrant-receiving and migrant-sending countries. We will also explore how and why positive questions on the economics of migration get intertwined with normative and emotional considerations rooted in philosophy and psychology respectively. Readings for this course will include several seminal and recent peer-reviewed papers as well as popular press articles and books. Students will respond to these readings in various ways: they will write response papers, op-eds, book/article reviews, and policy briefs. Finally, as their final group project for the course, students will formulate a relevant question that can be answered using survey data, collect the appropriate survey data, and conduct an empirical exercise based on that data.

Prerequisites: ECO 202, ECO 203, ECO 205

Section D: 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 narratives rooted in the social realities of the times. We study the evolution of economic ideas by inquiring into the historical-social-political contexts of key advances - milestones - in the making of modern economics. Tumultuous intellectual battles were lost and won as the Physiocrats rebelled against Mercantilism and inspired Adam Smith and Classicalism, as the Classicals confronted challenges from Marxism and Socialism, and as Neoclassicalism coopted or deflected these challenges. Thus we examine how, from the ideas and times of the great thinkers, emerged milestones in economic thought that shaped the world.

Section E: Topic in Public Policy
Instructor: Cools

Economic analysis can help inform public policies. This class will examine policy topics such as the earned income tax credit, childcare subsidies, and voting processes. Both economic theory and empirical analysis will be used to explore the benefits and costs of different policies. Special attention will be given to methods used establish causality.

Section H: Honors Thesis
Instructor: Stroup

Independent research designed to formulate a written proposal for an honors thesis. The proposal will include a review of recent literature, development of a theoretical framework and research hypotheses, and a discussion of your empirical estimation approach and available data. An oral defense of the written proposal is required. Graded on a Pass/Fail basis. Students taking ECO 495 in the Fall who also pass their oral defense are eligible to register for ECO 495H in the Spring.