ECN 370 - Seminar in Political Economy

4 credits

This course begins with the premise that many economic interactions are “political” in the sense that coalitions of participants, whose interests may differ, can influence important outcomes. The course will explore tendencies toward competition, cooperation, and conflict, and their relationship to constraints imposed by the forces of supply and demand, as they operate in various institutional arenas, such as labor markets or the national economy. The course will examine relevant theories of incomplete contracting under conditions of imperfect information with some attention to game theory, and then apply these concepts to contemporary problems concerning employment, economic growth, and the distribution of income and wealth.

Prerequisite: ECN 280 and ECN 282.
Instructor: Ferguson