Economics

"Marxism" has played an enormous role in the shape of 20th-century history. But what did Marx really believe, and how can his "critique of political economy" help us to understand the historical development of capitalism, and its modern dynamics? What are the main challenges Marxian political economy faces? In this course, students examine Marx's materialist theory of human history, his critique of capitalism, and the extent to which his conceptual tools offer us a useful framework for understanding global socioeconomic change and continuity today, compared to other social scientific methods.

This course provides an overview of working in the United Kingdom and of the current economic situation in the country. It further discusses how the economic situation affects the workplace, how students can integrate into British working life, and how they can make the most of their internship placements. Topics include current political and economic climate, national legal framework, structure and workflow, integration of immigrants into the workforce, discrimination in the workplace, and comparison between U.K. and U.S. work experiences.

This course examines how China has achieved rapid economic growth in the past four decades in the absence of Western-style legal and democratic systems, both of which are conventionally viewed to be essential to economic development. It covers how China’s economic reform can be understood in the historical and comparative context, specifically the relevance of the East Asian developmental states model; what role China’s legal system as well as the relationship between law and politics has played in the country’s economic development; whether China’s experience can be called “growth without rule of law,” and whether it presents viable alternative that may inform other developing economies in their pursuit of prosperity. Topics include: legitimacy building, decentralization as a constitutional system, courts, governance of state-owned enterprises, formal and informal financing, property rights protection, environmental protection, labor regulation, China’s global economic engagements, and cyber governance.

The course discusses probability, distribution theory, and statistical inference. It covers mathematical statistics as important discrete and continuous probability distributions (such as the Binomial, Poisson, Uniform, Exponential, and Normal distributions) and investigates properties of these distributions, including use of the moment generating function. The course discusses point estimation techniques including method of moments, maximum likelihood, and least squares estimation. Statistical hypothesis testing and confidence interval construction follow, along with non-parametric and goodness-of-fit tests and contingency tables. A treatment of linear regression models, featuring the interpretation of computer-generated regression output and implications for prediction are also covered.