English

The twenty-first century is an age of unprecedented globalization. To better understand globalization, the course introduces the core models of international trade: Ricardian Model, the specific-factors model, and the Heckscher-Ohlin model. The course also deals with the research frontier by explaining how increasing returns and product differentiation affect trade and welfare. Finally, the course is devoted to understanding trade policy.

Prerequisite: ECO2102 Microeconomics

This course examines the turbulent and exciting history of the Roman Republic from its humble beginnings around 500 BCE to the assassination of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March 44 BCE. The first part of this course celebrating this formative period in world history discusses early Rome; the social, political and religious institutions of the Republic as they gradually emerged from 509 to 264 BCE; and the Roman conquest of Italy and its significance. The second part concerns the high point of the Roman Republic, approximately the period from 264 to 133 BCE, including discussions of the Punic Wars and the conquest of the Mediterranean, and its tremendous consequences for the Republic. The third and final part deals with the Republic’s troubled last century and surveys the ill-fated Gracchan reforms; the first full-fledged breakdown of the Republican system and the Sullan reaction; the social, economic and cultural life of this period; the rise of the great dynasts; and Caesar’s temerarious attempt to establish a New Order.

This course introduces students to the key principles of genetics including Mendelian genetics, inheritance of genes, gene interaction, sex determination, polyploidy, casus and effects of mutations, gene cloning, prokaryote and eukaryote gene expression, recombination and its use in gene mapping, bacterial genetics, population and evolutionary genetics, basic molecular biology techniques including plasmid construction, PCR and DNA sequencing, and research applications of genetics. Students develop skills through data handling and problem solving, and through laboratory-based practical work.

This undergraduate lecture course is designed to survey major topics of the international relations of the People’s Republic of China with a specific focus on Chinese perspective. With a brief introduction of major theoretical perspective on foreign policy studies, the main body of the course is organized around special topics of Chinese foreign policies, including the Chinese historical legacy and its impact on China’s foreign policy, nationalism and public opinion in contemporary China, mechanism of China’s foreign-policy decision-making, leaders and their styles, China’s attitudes towards global governance, the economic dimension of China’s interactions with the outside world, public diplomacy and China’s soft power and China’s policy towards peripheral countries, (in particular, the Northeast Asia and the South China Sea). This course pays attention to the application of different international relations theories to the problems under study. The course aims to acquaint students with knowledge of China’s involvement in world affairs in historical and contemporary perspectives and train them with an analytical understanding of the dynamics of China’s foreign policy.

Exploring advanced theories used to understand financial markets in the context of corporate borrowing and lending, students discuss financing frictions that differentiate the functioning of perfect and imperfect capital markets. They then build on these theories to understand security design and the process of security issuance in equity markets. By applying the course material students evaluate corporate risk management and hedging, understand the role of corporate control, and the interaction of control rights and cash flow rights.

This course provides a largely non-technical introduction to the basic concepts and methods used by economists to understand and explain the features of the world economy today. Students explore globalization of trade and finance; the emergence of global value chains and the rise of China and India; and the winners and losers of globalization within rich and developing economies.

In 1000 BCE, the Mediterranean and Near East were barely urbanized; in the centuries that followed, a dense network of interconnected cities spanning the region developed. This course explores this transformation by examining changing physical as well as social relations between people, as well as between people and their environments. Students study the rise and fall of the ancient city, including its ecology and domestic politics, and modern debates over ancient urbanism. What existed before cities? Why do cities appear and why do they decline? How do cities relate to the natural world? Is urbanism necessarily linked to inequality? How do cities change when they are integrated into imperial systems? Students explore these questions through a variety of case studies, from tiny trading outposts to megacities like Rome and Alexandria, and a range of types of evidence, such as written histories, inscribed law codes, and the physical remains of the cities themselves.