Abstract: Surveys theories of regional growth, factor mobility, clustering, industrial restructuring, learning regions, and global supply chains from a political-economy perspective. Examines/critiques accounting frameworks including accounting for the underground economy, multipliers, linkages, and supply chains used to assess employment and environmental impacts, infrastructure investments. Assesses price indices, industrial location and employment measures, and shift-share analyses. Discussions of US and foreign applications.
Abstract: Surveys theories of regional growth, factor mobility, clustering, industrial restructuring, learning regions, and global supply chains from a political-economy perspective. Examines/critiques accounting frameworks including accounting for the underground economy, multipliers, linkages, and supply chains used to assess employment and environmental impacts, infrastructure investments. Assesses price indices, industrial location and employment measures, and shift-share analyses. Discussions of US and foreign applications.
Abstract: Surveys theories of regional growth, factor mobility, clustering, industrial restructuring, learning regions, and global supply chains from a political-economy perspective. Examines/critiques accounting frameworks including accounting for the underground economy, multipliers, linkages, and supply chains used to assess employment and environmental impacts, infrastructure investments. Assesses price indices, industrial location and employment measures, and shift-share analyses. Discussions of US and foreign applications. In this course students examine and critique accounting frameworks, including accounting for the underground economy, multipliers, linkages, and supply chains used to assess employment and environmental impacts and infrastructure investments. They also assess the value of price indices, industrial location and employment measures, and shift-share analyses. Discussions of U.S. and foreign applications and their relation will be featured in the class.
Abstract: Examines political institutions from a rational choice perspective. The now burgeoning rational choice literature on legislatures, bureaucracies, courts, and elections constitutes the chief focus. Some focus on institutions from a comparative and/or international perspective. Graduate students are expected to pursue the subject in greater depth through reading and individual research. Advanced undergrads may take subject with faculty approval. This is an applied theory course covering topics in the political economy of democratic countries. This course examines political institutions from a rational choice perspective. The now burgeoning rational choice literature on legislatures, bureaucracies, courts, and elections constitutes the chief focus. Some focus will be placed on institutions from a comparative and/or international perspective.
Abstract: This course focuses on the institutional relationships that affect the raising, maintenance and use of military forces in the United States. It is about civil/military, government/industry, military/science and military service/military service relations. The course examines how politicians, defense contractors, and military officers determine the military might of the United States. It analyses the military strategies of the nation and the bureaucratic strategies of the armed services, contractors, and defense scientists. It offers a combination of military sociology, organizational politics, and the political economy of defense.
Abstract: This course focuses on the institutional relationships that affect the raising, maintenance and use of military forces in the United States. It is about civil/military, government/industry, military/science and military service/military service relations. It examines how politicians, defense contractors, and military officers determine the military might of the United States and analyzes the military strategies of the nation and the bureaucratic strategies of the armed services, contractors, and defense scientists. It offers a combination of military sociology, organizational politics, and the political economy of defense.
Abstract: Natural Resources and Population – Spring 2008. Ever since publication of Thomas Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798, the English-speaking world has equated population growth with apocalypse, even though Malthus’s theory was debunked well before his own demise in 1834. This course begins from the proposition that human-environment relations are always social relations: how natural resources are produced, distributed, valued, consumed, conserved and degraded are historically- and geographically-specific questions whose answers cannot be reduced to “the earth’s carrying capacity.” To be sure, the world’s population has never been larger, and its environmental prospects have never been so dim as at present. But the “ultimate” outcomes of population growth and natural resource development (or depletion) are neither preordained nor very predictable. The question is how to understand these relations as simultaneously social and ecological. We will begin with an overview of recent research into human effects on the environment, followed by a closer look at Malthus’s famous essay and its place in classical political economy. Then we will examine several ways that current scholars approach human-environment interactions, as well as several case studies. We will see that environmental issues are always intimately related to political and economic ones—colonialism, capitalism, the state, science, and so forth—and that to abstract “the natural” from “the social” is at best naïve and at worst dangerous.
Abstract: This course is designed to acquaint beginning students with some of the fundamental principles of international relations such as realism and idealism. Realism, for example is based on the assumption that the state constitutes the most important actor in the international system. The course will also explore the nature of idealism, which emphasizes the role of international norms and ethics, such as the preservation of human rights, as a means of realizing international justice. The course will also analyze international political economy and various theories ranging from mercantilism to dependency theory.
Abstract: Covers conditions under which public-sector policies, programs, and projects succeed in enhancing the economic activities of poorer groups and micro-regions in developing countries. Topics include local economic development; small enterprises; various forms of collective action; labor and worker associations; nongovernment organizations. Links these to literature on poverty, economic development, and reform of government, and to types of projects, tasks, and environments that are conducive to equitable outcomes.
Abstract: Theory and evidence on government taxation policy. Topics include tax incidence, optimal tax theory, the effect of taxation on labor supply and savings, taxation and corporate behavior, and tax expenditure policy.
Abstract: Theory and evidence on government expenditure policy. Topics include the theory of public goods; education; state and local public goods; political economy; redistribution and welfare policy; social insurance programs such as social security and unemployment insurance; and health care policy.
Abstract: Explores political and historical evolution of Soviet state and society from 1917 Revolution to its demise in 1991. Subject covers the creation of a revolutionary regime; causes and nature of the Stalin revolution; post-Stalinist efforts to achieve radical political and social reform; and causes of the Soviet collapse. At its greatest extent the former Soviet Union encompassed a geographical area that covered one-sixth of the Earth's landmass. It spanned 11 time zones and contained over 100 distinct nationalities, 22 of which numbered over one million in population. In the 74 years from the October Revolution in 1917 to the fall of Communism in 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, its leaders and its people, had to face a number of difficult challenges: the overthrow of the Tsarist autocracy, the establishment of a new state, four years of civil war, a famine, transition to a mixed economy, political strife after Lenin's death, industrialization, collectivization, a second famine, political Show Trials, World War II, post-war reconstruction and repression, the "Thaw" after Stalin's death, Khrushchev's experimentation, and Brezhnev's decline. Each of these challenges engendered new solutions and modifications in what can be loosely called the evolving "Soviet system..