2024-2025 Academic Year

Fall 2024

ECON 112 Intro to Macroeconomics
A study of the fundamentals of economic analysis and of basic economic institutions, with particular emphasis upon national output, employment, and price levels. The monetary and financial system is explored together with problems of economic stability. Monetary and fiscal policy procedures are analyzed and evaluated in light of the current economic climate. Special attention is given to the historical development of major economic institutions.Prerequisite: 111.

ECON 288 Contending Econ Perspectives
A study of major heterodox economic theories such as Marxian, institutional, feminist, post-Keynesian, or Austrian economics. Students will study these contending economic perspectives through their historical evolution, methods and theoretical structures, and/or current policy debates. Prerequisites: 111 and 112.

ECON 373 History of Economic Thought
This course provides an appraisal of the origins and evolution of selected economic theories, primarily through the works of great economists of the past. Past economic works are analyzed in their theoretical and historical context. Prerequisites: any one of the following intermediate-level ECON courses 268, 278, 288, or 298.

Spring 2025

ECON 288 Contending Econ Perspectives
A study of major heterodox economic theories such as Marxian, institutional, feminist, post-Keynesian, or Austrian economics. Students will study these contending economic perspectives through their historical evolution, methods and theoretical structures, and/or current policy debates. Prerequisites: 111 and 112.

ECON 496 Ethics and Economics
Permission of Instructor Required. This course explores the complex and subtle relationship between ethics and economics, challenging the view that economics is a purely "value-free" science. Over the semester, we shall examine the historical roots of economics in religion and moral philosophy, the formation and development of ethical reasoning in the history of economic ideas, the role ethical assumptions (explicit and implicit) played in pivotal debates, the ethical enabling conditions of economic performance and the effect that performance plays in creating and sustaining ethical behavior, the ethical properties of economic expertise and advice-giving, how the incorporation of explicit ethical terms in our models might improve predictive economics, and the use of ethics in evaluating behavior and policy. Along the way, we will critically assess the rational actor model, homosocialis, homoeconomicus, and similar concepts in terms of their ethical plausibility and empirical adequacy, aiming to provide a more nuanced understanding of human motivation and to develop a more comprehensive and relevant economic theory. This course is reading and writing intensive.

ECON 500 Independent Study