POL1916: The Politics of Trade and Money

This seminar introduces students to the study of international political economy. After illuminating some important current issues about trade and monetary affairs, including recent efforts to restrict trade with China and China?s effort to promote economic development through its Belt and Road Initiative, we study the post-World War II evolution of the global trading and monetary systems. This includes evaluating some contending theoretical perspectives about these systems. Then we analyze the politics of trade. Among the topics singled out for close study are the distributional consequences of trade, particularly, how trade produces skill and occupational cleavages within democratic countries and, in turn, these cleavages produce populism. Institutions for governing trade like the World Trade Organization also are studied. The effects of monetary flows?both of currency and capital?are examined next. Topics in this part of the class include the American Federal Reserve as a world lender of last resort, the reasons why countries adopt the U.S. dollar as their currency, the demand for and consequence of direct foreign investment, and the workings and activities of the World Bank. In the closing weeks of the class we take a closer look at trade and monetary developments in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The recent claim that developing countries are falling into to Chinese financed ?debt trap? is studied in these weeks.

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