Respond to two of the six prompts below. Each response should be approximately 800 words.
What is behavioral economics and how does it differ from economics in general? What is beneficial about using behavioral economics?
How did the transition from immediate-return hunter gather economies into delayed-return agricultural economies change the way human beings live? What were the benefits and costs of this transition?
What does it mean that currency is a “social construct”? How has currency developed historically and where do you think it is headed in the future?
How and why did England transition from feudalism to capitalism? Why did it, arguably, happen here first?
It is common to hear arguments that capitalism will not survive automation and artificial intelligence. Why would this be the case? What is your opinion of these concerns?
What is the recipe for a “hype” brand? How do these companies obtain high prices for goods of marginal utility? Can we understand these brands only using classical economic models or does it require the addition of behavioral perspectives?
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
Economics has developed as a highly deductive social science. It begins with rather rigid assumptions about how human beings should behave to be “rational.” These were developed in the late-18th Century. Yet, inductive approaches, such as psychology and sociology understand human behavior with much a more inductive lens. How do people actually act economically and socially in feudal, capitalist, socialist, or communist economic systems? How do they react to the “rules of the game” and what are the consequences? This course examines and compares the economic systems humans have used historically to define the social psychology of economic behavior. It also addresses the future of economic systems given new technologies like automation and artificial intelligence and the rapid expansion of globalization and online commerce.
COURSE LEARNING OBJECTIVES
By the end of the course, students should be able to:
Classify and summarize different economic systems historically
Interpret the “rules of the game” provided by economies
Compare and analyze human behavior in different economic systems using social psychology
Evaluate empirical descriptions of economic behavior to the core assumptions of economics
Formulate predictions about the future of economic systems and critically examine the consequences of economic systems (e.g., inequality, climate change)
Utilize Excel and economic data
REQUIRED READINGS
The following are the required reading material for this course:
Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism
Perry Anderson
Verso World History Series
Verso; 1 edition (March 12, 2013)
ISBN-10: 1781680086
ISBN-13: 978-1781680087
Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism
George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller
Princeton University Press; 32511th edition (February 21, 2010)
ISBN-10: 9780691145921
ISBN-13: 978-0691145921
Online and Free
The Wealth of Nations
Adam Smith
Available free online: http://files.libertyfund.org/files/220/0141-02_Bk.pdf
The Communist Manifesto a Modern Edition
Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels
Available free online: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf
