Teaching

This graduate seminar covers international political economy with a focus on the politics of international trade, investment, and monetary relations. The course material will focus on key actors and forces that determine international commercial policies: special interest groups; collective action; domestic institutions; international institutions; global economic and political order. The readings for this course are primarily drawn from academic journals in political science and economics.

This undergraduate course explores the politics of international economic relations. We will examine the sources of national economic policies affecting international trade, foreign investment and multinational corporations, exchange rate regimes, and regional economic integration. We will also study efforts and challenges to constructing global and regional economic orders as well as the politics of economic relations between countries at different stages of development. Throughout the course, we will focus on three interrelated facets of politics: the distributive consequences of international economic policy; political conflicts among interest groups and states; and the role of national and international institutions in channeling and ameliorating these conflicts.

This undergraduate course will take an interdisciplinary approach toward understanding current trade wars and the world trading system based on studies of economics, political science, and international trade law. You will learn what international trade policy is about, why it becomes politicized, and how trade policies are formulated in the U.S. and China and used against each other. Another important component of this course is to study how current trade policies are governed by international agreements and laws. Along the way, we will explore current trade trends and how they affect consumers, workers, firms, and industries in the U.S. and other places. You will also learn about domestic and international trade institutions more generally, and trade-related topics on the environment, labor, intellectual property, and more.