History and Politics of Globalization

COURSE DESCRIPTION

We start from a brief description of important technological, legal and political developments of the 16th,17th and 18th centuries. We then spend most of the course analyzing the ebbs and flows of the internationalization of the world economy in the 19th and 20th centuries: growth and international specialization in the early 19th century; the gold standard and Pax Britannica after 1860; the rise of organized labor movements in the early 20th century; the growth and subsequent dominance of American techniques, firms, and economic policies from the 1920s onwards; the Bretton Woods era of multilateral economic institutions; the process of European integration; and the relative decline of Japan and the rise of China).

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the end of this course the students will:

• Have an in-depth knowledge of the economic and political forces which have forged our world. Specifically, they will have acquired specialized knowledge in (i) international trade; (ii) international monetary affairs; and (iii) international finance.
• Have an improved understanding of, and the ability to make original contributions to, important current debates (e.g. should Europe apply antitrust regulations on American firms? Or, is the American administration insisting too much on denouncing the manipulation of the Chinese currency? Or, should Brazil seek to protect its local industries by raising tariffs?)
• Start developing real research skills of their own (e.g. analyze whether countries on free trade do economically better than their protectionist counterparts: asking the right question, defining specific research hypotheses, collecting relevant data, and performing the most pertinent analysis).