Crisis, Globalization, and Economics
Spring term, Block F
W 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Professors Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Richard B. Freeman (Faculty of Arts and Sciences)
2 classroom credits LAW-34215A
This course examines the present global financial and economic crisis, and reconsiders economic theory and policy in its light.
The course begins with a study of world economic crises, from the 1930s to today. It goes on to examine how today's slump has spread from financial markets to labor and product markets and from the United States to the world.
The analysis of crises provides an opportunity to consider the nature, the limitations, and the future of economic theory. We discuss the intellectual history of efforts to understand the causes of economic busts in the context of fundamental ideas about how economies work and grow. We address proposals for the reform of the relation between finance and the real economy as examples of a larger task: the institutional reconstruction of market economies, to make them more inclusive as well as less susceptible to breakdown. The aim is to rethink the methods of economics as well as the organization of the economy.
Readings from the literature of economic and political theory and policy.
Jointly offered by the Law School and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Richard B. Freeman is the Herbert Ascherman Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.