The state plays a large role in the economy, employing a substantial fraction of the labor force, producing and consuming a wide variety of goods and services, building infrastructure, taxing economic activity, enforcing contracts, redistributing wealth, regulating industries, and so on. Therefore, the allocation of society’s resources - the subject matter of economics - depends crucially on how political decisions are made.
Economics is an ideology whose primary act of meaning-making is its self-presentation as objective social science. Through its graceful yet pernicious definitions of efficiency, value, competition, property, rights, and freedom, economics simultaneously hides and implements its oppressive neoliberal ideology. This class rejects this economics. In its place, guided by anti-racist principles, we work to develop a new economics with new definitions, new methods, and new frameworks.
This course introduces the field of behavioral economics, which incorporates insights from psychology into economics with the aim of improving human welfare. Behavioral economics studies how individuals actually make decisions, which may deviate from the way "rational actors" are modeled in terms of making decisions in classical economics. Motivated by non-fiction readings and academic articles, we will use behavioral economic frameworks to characterize this actual decision-making and to explore its consequences for markets and for policy.
Mainstream economics is fundamentally neoliberal, employing narratives of meritocracy to explain, normalize, and justify racial capitalism and the inequality and exploitation it inevitability produces. Pluralist economics provides alternative explanations and understandings, directly challenging the conceptualizations, models, methods, values, topics, and pedagogy of economic practice. This sophomore seminar engages students in an exploration of pluralist economics.
Discussion for ECON 111.
A study of the central problem of scarcity and of the ways in which the U.S. economic system allocates scarce resources among competing ends and apportions the goods produced among people. Two 80-minute and one 50-minute lecture/discussion per week.
Requisite for all other courses in Economics.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
How to handle overenrollment: Drop students who do not attend the first two classes and admit students from a waiting list.
Discussion for ECON 111.
A study of the central problem of scarcity and of the ways in which the U.S. economic system allocates scarce resources among competing ends and apportions the goods produced among people. Two 80-minute and one 50-minute lecture/discussion per week.
Requisite for all other courses in Economics.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
How to handle overenrollment: Drop students who do not attend the first two classes and admit students from a waiting list.
Discussion for ECON 111.
A study of the central problem of scarcity and of the ways in which the U.S. economic system allocates scarce resources among competing ends and apportions the goods produced among people. Two 80-minute and one 50-minute lecture/discussion per week.
Requisite for all other courses in Economics.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
How to handle overenrollment: Drop students who do not attend the first two classes and admit students from a waiting list.
Discussion for ECON 111.
A study of the central problem of scarcity and of the ways in which the U.S. economic system allocates scarce resources among competing ends and apportions the goods produced among people. Two 80-minute and one 50-minute lecture/discussion per week.
Requisite for all other courses in Economics.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
How to handle overenrollment: Drop students who do not attend the first two classes and admit students from a waiting list.
Open to seniors with consent of the Department.
Spring semester. The Department.
How to handle overenrollment: null
Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: (none specified)
Open to seniors with consent of the Department.
Spring semester. The Department.
How to handle overenrollment: null
Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: (none specified)
