Introduction to Political Economy

How was the economic pain of Covid-19 distributed across our society and whose needs and interests will be met by the post-Covid (or late Covid) economy? How and why are the burdens and benefits of taxation unequally distributed across US society? If inequality hurts society socially and economically, which political and economic forces reinforce economic inequality?

These questions and others are central to political economy, the interdisciplinary study of politics and economics. This course will be a non-traditional problem-centered introduction to the study of the economy. We are using a new open-source online textbook from critical economists that uses real world policy problems to learn the concepts and methods of economics. The course offers a deeper focus on real world problems and on social power relations in the determination of economic outcomes than a conventional introduction to economics. It is designed to help Fairhaven students explore the very real connections between economics, politics, history and public policy.

We will work with an open access textbook and a primer for non economics majors. Each student will write their own book review essay on a topic related to political economy. Homework will teach some simple statistical techniques in Excel for interpreting (or debating our interpretations of) some real world data.