Economics

The course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. Through the critical review of classical theories of capitalism, students discuss both fixed and invariant elements in the development of modern capitalism and what makes peculiar its contemporary forms. Students examine some of the most important concepts in present intellectual and political debate, such as globalization, financialization, etc. The course begins with a historical and theoretical framing of the question regarding the peculiarity of contemporary capitalism, briefly considering some of the most influential classical approaches to the study of capitalism. The course subsequently focuses on more recent debates and examines several proposals to conceptually grasp the specific capitalist formation that began to take shape in the early 1970s. Such concepts as flexible accumulation and late capitalism, the knowledge economy and neoliberalism, cognitive and postcolonial capitalism, Empire and postfordism, "racial capitalism" and feminist critique of political economy are critically discussed. The course then focuses on the so-called "platform capitalism." Taking platforms both as emerging business model and as a political form the course investigates their origins in the intertwined domains of logistics and digitization. It then focuses on the operations of some of the most important platforms - from Uber to Amazon, from Deliveroo to Airbnb - and discusses their implications both for the transformation of urban spaces and for labor (introducing such notions as "algorithmic management" and "digital labor"). In general, platforms are taken both as a specific research object and as a lens that allows discerning wider tendencies in the development of contemporary capitalism.

The six-week summer lab research program at National Taiwan University places students in various science, engineering and social science research labs and/or projects under the supervision of faculty. Students spend approximately 30 hours per week in lab activities.

This course explores new perspectives in economics related to the environment and sustainable development goals. It discusses the limits of the green circular economy, the main dilemmas and implications of growth for society and the environment, and the trade-off between economic growth and environmental protection and social justice.

This course reviews the development of selected research topics from the fields of economic theory such as general equilibrium theory, game theory, mechanism design, decision theory, social choice theory, information economics, and behavioral economics. 

This course introduces students to the theoretical and empirical research in behavioral economics and discusses how the use of methods and evidence in behavioral economics has changed both economics as a discipline and policymaking processes in the past few decades.

This course combines economic theory with historical facts and examines the economic and social development of the East and the West. It covers the important historical content of all human economic and social activities from the origin of agricultural civilization to the present day, such as the origin of agricultural civilization, the great Geographical discovery, Columbus exchange, religious Reform, industrial Revolution, modern industrialization, the Great Depression, globalization and other related issues.