Course Description
This class is an introduction to economics, through the lens of two continuing trends: the credibility revolution in empirical methods, and the revival of fields, topics, and research questions once dismissed as “not economics.” We will learn traditional mathematical tools from economics to study modern research questions, with an emphasis on empirical rigor. To be more specific, consider the course title:
Principles: there is a set of tools that every economist uses, formally in research and in discussions with the public. Examples include the fundamental problem of causal inference, the idea of opportunity cost, or the implications of a well-defined general equilibrium. I will teach you some of the most important skills, and how you can use them to do good in the world!
Applied: the goal of the class is to combine critical thinking with economic tools to explain and deliberate solutions to real problems in our society. This is the sense in which the class is applied since we do not develop the tools or discuss their theoretical properties, but instead use them.
Microeconomics: the topics we study involve the analysis of individual decision making in the presence of material and institutional constraints. Macroeconomics considers the aggregate implications of individual decisions, and we will also introduce some macro concepts as needed.
As we learn them, we will apply these skills to understand modern research in migration, the gender gap in earnings, and the racial gap in wealth. While I could have chosen readings in more traditional topics like rent control, international trade, or firm investment, these seem to have received disproportionate attention from economists and students of economics in the past. Although the topics we study are quite diverse, they share a common theme: preventing people from engaging in economic activity when they otherwise could and would always results in (i) gaps between the prevented and the free, (ii) lower total production for both the prevented and the free, and (iii) obvious solutions that involve perturbing the social order and distribution of wealth in society (i.e. stop preventing, and instead enable economic activity).
Syllabus
Lectures
Practice Problems