AECO 21A00 - Trade and International Finance

The objective of the course is to offer students an introduction to two key dimensions of globalization: international trade and international finance. The course will cover both theoretical and empirical contributions and will often refer to current policy issues in both international trade and macroeconomics. Using theoretical and empirical tools, we will consider a wide range of questions such as: what are the gains of specialization? what is the effect of trade on inequality? How does market power of firms affect international trade? What are the consequences of trade policies? How to understand international financial flows? What is the relation between exchange rates and monetary policy? How does globalization affect the conduct of macroeconomic policies? Is the euro an optimal currency area? Why so many international financial crises?

The prerequisite for this course is the core economics course in the first year. Although not very formalized (I will mostly use graphs to explain theoretical mechanisms), this course will use some basic mathematical tools that are common in any modern economic course.