Seminar Choices for 2009-10

Economic Research Seminar This seminar is intended for students desiring to complete an SYE Independent Project (Economics 489/490) or do a full-year, two-unit honors project (Economics 490 & 499). In the fall, students will meet as a seminar, develop project proposals, and begin work on their individual projects. Students allowed to continue with honors will register for Economics 499, Senior Honors Project, for the spring semester. Students wishing to do honors projects must have a cum in economics of 3.5 or better by the end of their junior year. Students wishing to do an independent projects must have a GPA of 3.0 or better and submit approved written topic proposals before the last week of classes the in the spring of their junior year. |Instructor: Bansak | Semester: Fall '09|

Economics of Smoking and Drinking There are many interesting economic, regulatory, and legal issues that can be addressed by examining the markets for alcohol and tobacco. We will investigate the economics of addiction and habits, discounting the future, and risk perceptions. We also will examine the market structure of these industries and the behavior of firms within the market. We will study how changes in prices, regulations, income, and personal characteristics affect individuals' smoking and drinking behavior. We will also look at how people's smoking and drinking affects economic outcomes. Key to understanding both consumer and firm behavior is understanding the regulatory roles of government over these products, including excise taxation, direct regulation, and information provision. Additional topics may include the legal systems' dealings with these products, advertising, and the politics of tobacco and alcohol. |Instructor: Del Rossi | Semester: Fall '09|

Trust, Contracts, and Social Networks Throughout history there have always been ethnic or religious groups that were more commercially successful and richer than others. Examples include South Asians (Indians) in East Africa, Lebanese in West Africa, ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia, Japanese in South America, Koreans in South Los Angeles. Sometimes success has been credited to either admirable cultural traits or nefarious collusion and exclusionary practices. New Institutional Economics provides another explanation: certain groups are advantaged by social networks that engender trust and allow for the more effective formation and enforcement of contracts. These groups are thus better able to engage in more sophisticated, and more profitable, economic arrangements unavailable to others. This seminar will develop the economics of trust, contracts, and social networks, using case studies to explore if and how social networks can explain the commercial success of certain minority groups. |Instructor: Blewett | Semester: Fall '09|

A Brief and Selected History of Financial Crises In this course we will consider the development of money and banking in the in the US paying particular attention to financial crises. Crises to be considered will include the Panic of 1907 that in part led to the creation of the Federal Reserve System, the Great Depression of the 1930s when nearly 9000 banks failed, and the Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s. We will also address the global interconnectedness of finance by considering the effects that financial crises in other countries have here in the US, such as impacts of the Asian and Russian crises of the 1990s on US finance. All the while we will aim to compare and contrast these past crises to that of our current financial situation. |Instructor: Jenkins | Semester: Spring '10|

Malthusianism Past and Present The world is running out of resources. More and more people in the future will live in "water stressed" nations. Food will become ever more expensive, as will energy and mineral resources. Pollution will kill us, and climate change, species loss, and deforestation will ruin the planet if current trends continue. And it's all caused by population growth. This is the litany of contemporary Neo-Malthusian environmentalists, but it is nothing new. Paul Ehrlich's Population Bomb (1968) or the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth (1972) are in many ways simply reincarnations of Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). Beginning with Malthus's famous essay, this course will examine the Malthusian worldview and its transition from integral part of economics to outright rejection and rebirth in the writings of some environmentalists. Why this reversal in economics? Is it based on a truism (finite resources must eventually run out)? Or is it susceptible to empirical refutation? These are some of the questions we will address as we progress from Malthus's Essay to Julian Simon's Ultimate Resource. |Instructor: Young | Semester: Spring '10|

Game Theory Checkers, chess, hockey, auctions, divorce trials, international treaty negotiations, teen age dating, collective bargaining, and faculty meetings have something in common.. Each constitutes a situation where two or more "players" match wits, where outcomes depend on player strategies, and where there is significant interdependence between players. "Game Theory", the framework commonly used to analyze such situations, was first developed by Von Neuman and Morgenstern in 1944, and has been refined and extended by others, including John Nash, a Nobel laureate portrayed in the recent movie A Beautiful Mind. Since, in the words of another Nobel Prize winner Paul Samuelson, "to be literate in the modern age you need to have a general understanding of game theory", this course provides an introduction to the theory of non-cooperative games. It then explores applications in the fields of economics, politics, law, and sociology. |Instructor: FitzRandolph | Semester: Spring '10|