Courses
Understanding Global Economics and Markets, SISG-774
This course provides an understanding of the main economic forces that have driven the globalization process. It covers the fundamental facts, main lessons of experience, and leading principles of micro- and macroeconomics and the financial markets without recourse to unnecessary jargon, mathematics, or statistics. Topics include the role of markets and prices; the economics of businesses; features of labor markets; elements of financial and nonfinancial investments; essentials of money and banking; the economics of government finances; the principles behind international trade, finance, and income disparities; and the workings of the foreign exchange, stock, bond, and other financial markets.
Read the complete Syllabus.
Populism: Lessons from Latin America, SIS-419
Populism appears to be sweeping through Europe and North America and is also making gains in Southeast Asia. Autocratic-leaning, nationalistic leaders, whether experienced or aspiring politicians, position themselves as outsiders who can solve the social problems that elites have failed to overcome, offering brutal approaches to crime while blaming vulnerable groups like religious minorities and new immigrants. Latin America is the region with the most and most diverse instances of populism, many of which ended up undermining the foundations of their liberal democracies. The region’s numerous experiences illustrate populism’s promises, inherent authoritarian and nationalistic tendencies, and mostly economic failures. This course identifies the institutional and socioeconomic contexts that have given rise to populism in a variety of countries, analyzes the discourse and policy choices of populist leaders, and reviews their performance particularly in terms of economic-policy design and implementation.
Read the complete Syllabus.
Economic Globalization: Pros and Cons, CORE-105
Economic globalization refers to the increasing integration of national economies across the world through intensified cross-border movement of goods, services, technology and capital. Some view it with trepidation, as a juggernaut of untrammeled capitalism marked by such economic interdependence that countries become even more vulnerable to the destructive impact of market shifts. To others, it is a powerful force for good that opens and modernizes societies, empowering consumers and challenging producers; spurring economic efficiency and thus prosperity; undermining national monopolies and promoting innovation; redistributing capital, skills and know-how from rich to poor countries; and encouraging the adoption of better practices in many fields of endeavor and policy. You will read and discuss a variety of authors to understand these opposing views on the economic, financial, political, and social challenges that have arisen. The learning objectives are to enhance your understanding of the concept of economic globalization -- its theoretical principles, practical applications, and policy implications. The expected learning outcomes are the ability to apply concepts and theories from economics and political economy to explain the phenomenon of economic globalization; exposure to sophisticated literature and empirical studies on key aspects of economic globalization; and awareness of facts, trends, hypotheses, and statistical analyses on globalization and international trade, poverty, inequality, capital flows, migration and offshoring.
Read the complete Syllabus.
International Economics, SIS-616 and ECON-670
International economics involves the application of the principles of micro- and macroeconomics to the realistic case of countries open to trade and capital flows across borders. It covers why international trade in goods and services takes place and what are its many consequences; the motivation for and consequences of barriers to trade; the pros and cons of joining trade blocs or of imposing trade embargoes; the contribution that trade can make to economic development; the role played by multinational companies specifically, and foreign investors generally; the conventional accounting of cross-border trade and financial transactions; the workings of the foreign exchange market; the rationale behind and impact of different exchange-rate policy regimes; the underlying reasons for international financial crises; and the policy implications of the interplay between international and domestic macroeconomic forces under different exchange-rate regimes.
Read the complete Syllabus.
International Finance and the Emerging Markets, SIS-627
This course deals with the implications of financial globalization for emerging-market countries, and specifically with the issues involved in attracting direct investment and portfolio flows; the peculiarities of global capital movements, such as "contagion" and "sudden stop" phenomena; the roles of credit rating agencies and the IMF in facilitating access to international lenders and investors; the danger posed by currency and maturity mismatches; the effectiveness (or not) of controls on capital flows; and the relationship between capital flows, overindebtedness and sovereign debt defaults.
Read the complete Syllabus.
International Economic Organizations: Public and Private, SIS-457/657 and ECON-496
This class will familiarize you with more than a dozen governmental and private-sector international organizations dealing with cross-border trade and financial issues. We will learn what they do and how they do it; examine how they have become more or less effective and relevant in light of the fast-paced globalization since the 1960s; study the challenges these institutions have faced and face currently; and discuss how they attempt to shape, but are also in turn shaped, by developments outside of their control.
Read the complete Syllabus.
Financial Issues in Latin America, SIS-458/658 & ECON 496/696
Systemic financial problems -- fiscal, banking, currency and debt crises, often in highly damaging combination -- have loomed large in the economic history of Latin America. Every couple of years some Latin American country or other managed to get itself into serious financial trouble. Lately, however, there have been no banking or currency crises in the region, and on the contrary the headlines generated have been mostly favorable. What explains the past macroeconomic instability in Latin America and the recently stable macrofinancial situation? We delve into this question by analyzing both the fundamental and precipitating causes of Latin America's past financial crises, focusing on economic policy and institutional shortcomings (in the fiscal, monetary, banking and exchange-rate areas), as well as on other domestic and external forces, that combined to generate macrofinancial instability. We then use specific case studies to go more in depth into particular situations encountered in recent years.
Read the complete Syllabus.
Financial
Issues in
Systemic financial
problems – fiscal, banking, currency and debt crises, often in highly
damaging combination – have loomed large in the economic history of
Read the complete Syllabus.
New York University
Department of
Economics
Financial Issues in
Systemic financial problems, from
hyperinflation to fiscal, banking and currency crises, have loomed large in the
economic history of
Read the complete Syllabus.
International
Study
The main
objective of this course is to enrich students’ understanding of
variations in the institutional contexts of nations and the impact of these
variations on national economic growth, globalization and the management of
multinational firms. Pursuit of that objective starts by developing a framework
for country analysis that can be applied to understanding the economic
performance of any country in the world, and the challenges, opportunities and
risks to multinational firms of doing business in any country in the world.
Classroom time is spent applying this framework to several countries in
The
course culminates in a school-wide competition among student teams from all
sections of the International Study Project course. The competition requires
that each team prepare and present a report that diagnoses the major
performance problems and opportunities facing the company visited, and makes
strategic recommendations to its management addressing those problems and
opportunities. Shortly after returning from the trip to
Read the complete Syllabus.
Developing Countries and the International Capital Markets, Econ 516T
This course analyzes the pros and cons of international financial liberalization, namely, the opening up to capital inflows and outflows on the part of developing and transition countries. The specific topics covered include the advantages and disadvantages of attracting direct investment versus portfolio flows; the determinants and peculiarities of global capital movements, including “contagion” and “sudden stop” phenomena; the roles of credit rating agencies in facilitating access to international lenders and investors, and of the IMF in preventing and helping to overcome capital account liberalization problems; the importance of currency and maturity mismatches and the effectiveness of controls on capital flows; and the relationship between capital flows, overindebtedness and sovereign debt defaults. Our readings consist of the latest empirical and policy writings on the various topics – as opposed to theoretical papers or classic works from earlier years – and they are drawn from a variety of authors around the globe that are doing state-of-the-art research. The format is that of tutorial meetings in groups of 2 students, at an hour to be mutually agreed.
Read the complete Syllabus.
Avoiding Financial Crises, Econ 518T
This course focuses on the causes of
the most common financial crises that afflict developing and transition
countries, with a view to understanding how best to avoid them altogether
– or at least to minimize their destructive economic and political
impact. The episodes studied include monetary (inflation) crises, banking
crises, currency (exchange rate) crises, and fiscal (debt) crises. The readings
cover mostly the empirical and policy-oriented literature, including specific
case studies of crisis development, avoidance and resolution, drawing from
experience in Asia, Emerging Europe and
Read the complete Syllabus.