AMES 25A00 - Perspectives in Economics and Sociology: Issues of Migration, Discrimination, Justice and Religion

Economics and sociology are often presented as antagonists or at least as competitors within the social sciences. The two disciplines have been nonetheless witnessing increasing exchanges and convergence during the last decades. On one side economics deals more and more with traditional sociological objects. On the other, sociology adopts new analytical and empirical tools that are commonly associated with economic analysis such as controlled experiments. Interdisciplinary economic and sociological approaches have been more and more central to the study of education, the family, urban segregation, international migration, gender inequality, etc. In this course, we will first start by discussing major issues that characterize the theoretical and methodological debates between economics and sociology. We will then explore social science topics with the combined lenses of economists and sociologists.

The course will be organized as follows:

• The first part will introduce and discuss differences and commonalities that traditionally characterize economics and sociology. Some space will be devoted to the discussion of the concept of causality and to the introduction of the trade-offs and complementarity between quantitative and qualitative approaches.
• The second part of the course will present selected social issues both within economic and sociological perspectives. In this part of the course, students will be exposed to recent research in the two disciplines about:
• The economic and social consequences of international migrations;
• The advancements in understanding discrimination;
• The study of religion;
• The causes of illegal and deviant behavior
• In the final part, we will present some recent studies about economists in the sociology of professions and discuss the way scientists from the two disciplines relate in the public and academic spheres.

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• Home work: A group assignment (4 students per group). You are free to choose which research question you address as long as you respect the overarching topic that we will assign to you. Both the support of your presentation (short essay) and the presentation itself (video, documentary, podcast etc) will be evaluated. You will have to introduce the topic (with data, selected empirical evidence or stylized facts) and provide an answer to our question by referring to the literature in sociology and in economics. The presentation should be recorded and sent to Laura Silva along with the essay. More deadline in the guidelines on the moodle. (40% of the total grade)
• Final Exam: duration 1h30 last session (60% of the total grade)