Foreign Economic Thought

    1. Basic Course Information

Course code: 18060392

Course Name: 

Course Type: General Course
Periods: 36
Credits: 2
Target Students: Undergraduate Students Majoring in Economics
Assessment: Examination
Preparatory Courses:  Microeconomics, Macroeconomics

    2. Brief Course Introduction

This course is something a little bit different from most other upper-level economics courses. Rather than examining how existing economic theory can be developed and applied to specific areas within economics, we will instead look back through the history of economic thought to understand how existing economic theory came to be. In particular, we want to understand both how mainstream neoclassical economics came to dominate the profession and how some alternative schools of thought have evolved and how they challenge neoclassicism.

This course will first look at classical economics, then the focus of this course will be on the development of economic thought since the 1870s. However, our focus will be on the so-called marginalist revolution of the 1870s and the various schools of thought that emerged from it. We will spend some time on the rise and fall of Keynesian economics which we will examine through Keynes' own words.

The goal of this course is not just to be familiar with what a lot of mostly dead economists have said. That's important, but what's more important is to understand how economics is today, and especially what's wrong with it. All this can be understood by looking at the path by which economic theory has evolved.