61 - 70 of 164 results for: ECON

Economic models and tools used to understand online market phenomena, including standards, network and platform economics, online transactions, advertising, auctions, information, communications, and networking. The contemporary economics literature on internet markets and mobile communications markets. Public policy issues in competition policy, communication policy, and support for innovation. Prerequisites: ECON 51 and ECON 102B.

This course explores the role of law in promoting well-being (happiness). Law, among its other functions, can serve as a mechanism to harmonize private incentives with cooperative gains, to maintain an equitable division of those gains, and to deter "cheating" and dystopia. Law is thus essential to civilization. Economic analysis of law focuses on the welfare-enhancing incentive effects of law and its enforcement and on law's role in reducing the risks of cooperation, achieved by fixing expectations of what courts or the state will do in various futures. Prerequisite: ECON 51

Economic sources of environmental problems and alternative policies for dealing with them (technology standards, emissions taxes, and marketable pollution permits). Evaluation of policies addressing regional air pollution, global climate change, water allocation in the western U.S., and the use of renewable resources. Connections between population growth, economic output, environmental quality, and human welfare. Prerequisite: ECON 50. May be taken concurrently with consent of the instructor.

The interaction between firms and consumers in markets that fall outside the benchmark competitive model. How firms acquire and exploit market power. Game theory and information economics to analyze how firms interact strategically. Topics include monopoly, price discrimination, oligopoly, collusion and cartel behavior, anti-competitive practices, the role of information in markets, anti-trust policy, and e-commerce. Sources include theoretical models, real-world examples, and empirical papers. Prerequisite: ECON 51.

Economics 158 examines public policies for dealing with problems arising in markets in which competitive forces are weak. The focus is on monopolies, oligopolies, cartels, and other environments where market mechanisms are unlikely to produce outcomes that benefit consumers more than the alternatives involving costly government intervention. The two main areas examined are competition policy and economic regulation. Competition policy refers to laws that define certain market behavior as illegal because it is harmful to competition or fails to provide consumer benefits that justify its costs to consumers. Economic regulation refers to policies in which government controls prices and/or decides the terms and conditions under which firms can participate in a market. A growing area of study and policy design is the introduction of market mechanisms into formerly regulated industries such as: telecommunications, electricity, airlines, railroads, postal delivery services and environmental regulation. Cross-listed with Law 220. Prerequisites: Econ 51 or equivalent.

This course will advance students understanding of economic, legal, and political approaches to avoiding or managing the problem of global climate change. Theoretical contributions as well as empirical analyses will be considered. In addition to examining economic issues and legal constraints, it will address the political economy of various emissions-reduction strategies. The course will consider policy efforts at the local, national, and international levels. Specific topics include: interactions among overlapping climate policies and between new policies and pre-existing legal or regulatory frameworks; the role that jurisdictional or geographic scale can play in influencing the performance of climate-policy approaches; and numerical modeling and statistical analyses of climate-change policies. Cross-listed with Law 2502 (formally Law 746). Prerequisites: Econ 50 or its equivalent.

Introduction to game theory and its applications to economics. Topics: strategic and extensive form games, dominant strategies, Nash equilibrium, subgame-perfect equilibrium, and Bayesian equilibrium. The theory is applied to repeated games, voting, auctions, and bargaining with examples from economics and political science. Prerequisites: Working knowledge of calculus and basic probability theory.

If, as economists argue, development can make everyone in a society better off, why do leaders fail to pursue policies that promote development? The course uses game theoretic approaches from both economics and political science to address this question. Incentive problems are at the heart of explanations for development failure. Specifically, the course focuses on a series of questions central to the development problem: Why do developing countries have weak and often counterproductive political institutions? Why is violence (civil wars, ethnic conflict, military coups) so prevalent in the developing world, and how does it interact with development? Why do developing economies fail to generate high levels of income and wealth? We study how various kinds of development traps arise, preventing development for most countries. We also explain how some countries have overcome such traps. This approach emphasizes the importance of simultaneous economic and political development as two different facets of the same developmental process. No background in game theory is required.

This course focuses on the purpose and design of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The course begins with a discussion of the economics of trade agreements and a brief introduction to the WTO as an institution. The course then considers a series of topics, which may include: the dispute resolution system; the choice between multilateral and regional or bilateral trade agreements; the international regulation of subsidies; the interface between international trade obligations and domestic regulation; safeguard measures; and trade preferences for developing countries in the WTO. Prerequisite: Econ 51.