Contemporary Economic Issues

Welcome to Contemporary Economic Issues.

Instructor: Marcus Pivato (THEMA, CY Cergy Paris Université)

Here is the course outline.

Here is the final exam from 2020. Here are the solutions to the final exam.

Textbooks:

• The Economy: Economics for a Changing World, by the CORE Team, Oxford University Press, 2017 (paperback). Available for about 50 € at Oxford University Press, FNAC, Amazon, or freely available online from CORE website.

• International Economics: Theory and Policy, by Paul Krugman, Maurice Obstfeld and Marc Melitz (9th edition or later, Pearson, 2012 or later). Available for 25€ at Amazon.

• Economic Development, by Michael P. Todaro and Stephen C. Smith (12th edition, Pearson, 2015). Available for 25€ at Amazon.

I will also use materials from the CORE Economics website (from the same people who wrote the textbook). It is an excellent resource. You should create an account (free) on this website to access these materials (they are available in both English and French).

Also useful is the website for the Conférences de méthodes "Questions économiques contemporaines", which will be run in parallel with this course.

Lecture slides

• Weeks 1-2 Technology and economic growth in the long run.

• Week 3-5. Globalisation, migration and trade.

  • KOM Chapter 2: Facts about globalization and the Gravity Model

  • KOM Chapter 3: The Ricardo model and comparative advantage

  • KOM Chapter 4: Specific Factors and Income Distribution

  • KOM Chapter 6: The standard trade model

  • KOM Chapter 8: Firms, multinationals, and outsourcing

• Week 6. Poverty and Inequality (CORE Chapter 19)

• Weeks 7-8. Economic Development.

  • Todaro & Smith Chapter 4: Contemporary models of (under)development

  • Todaro & Smith Chapter 8: Human capital

• Weeks 9-10. The environment: externalities, global warming, and sustainability.

  • CORE Chapter 12: Markets, efficiency, and public policy

  • CORE Chapter 20: Economics of the environment

• Bonus lecture: Introduction to normative economics