Fall 1999 247 Bellamy
TR 5.15 - 6.30 644 7091
BEL 213
jcobbe@coss.fsu.edu
Intended audience: This course is intended primarily for Master's
students in the International Affairs program who have no prior exposure
to college-level economics. The intent is to cover in one semester
equivalent material to that covered in the introductory ECO2013-2023 sequence
in two, thereby meeting prerequisite requirements for courses that may
be of more specific interest to such students like ECO 5705, 5715, ECS
5005, etc. To some extent, the course will emphasize international aspects
of the material more than most 2000 level sequences would.
Students who do not fit the description above (e.g. with minimal prior
exposure long ago, or in other programs who think they might benefit from
the course) are advised to consult with the instructor before committing
themselves to the course. The Department of Economics does not want you
to waste your time and effort on a course you do not need, nor does it
wish to grant graduate credit for duplication of previous work.
Objective: At the end of the course, students should be able to:
- meet prerequisite requirements for graduate courses in economics designated as suitable for graduate students in programs other than economics;
- critically read and discuss an article on economics in serious media such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, or Business Week, Forbes, or The Economist.
- understand and express in normal language the jargon and reasoning of an economic statement or argument.
- distinguish fallacious, plausible, and unknowable assertions about
the economy.
Procedure: The material to be covered is not difficult; it is
intended for sophomores. We are going to deal with it quickly. I am a firm
believer that this kind of material is learnt best by
doing, not
by listening, reading, or watching alone. The strategy for this course
is going to be that most of the work is done by you, the students, and
I as instructor act mainly as facilitator [and grader!]. I do not plan
to spend any substantial amount of class time on routine exposition of
the material in the body of the text; it is a good text, well-written for
sophomores but not unnecessarily verbose or repetitive, and you as graduate
students should be able to understand it with no difficulty. If there are
sections that you do have difficulty with, I will happily attempt to present
them slightly differently to try to help you, but the bulk of the material
I expect you to master for yourself from reading the text. We may spend
parts of some classes exploring in a little more detail extensions of the
international aspects of some of the material. What we will do most in
class is discuss problems; for each class a set of questions from the chapter
endings of the text will be assigned. Either alone or in pairs/small groups,
after reading the assigned chapter figure out your response
to the questions, before the class in question. Certain specified
questions will be designated to be turned in, in writing, each Thursday
[two Tuesdays in November]; these written answers should be prepared individually,
because they will be graded. In previous offerings, I have found that this
procedure works well for motivated graduate students, and allows us to
get through the whole of a fat book in one semester without wasting too
much of anyone's time. It does imply substantial time and effort from you
outside class, however, and if you don't put in the time and effort you
won't get all that much out of the class. In particular, it is important
to recognize that this material is mostly cumulative, and if we are discussing
problems it will not be much value to you if (a) you have fallen behind,
or (b) you do not look at the problems in advance of class. Partly for
that reason, I will NOT accept late written assignments AT ALL; if you
need to miss some classes for some legitimate reason, you need to turn
in the written assignments EARLY, not LATE. The exercises for each class,
and the designated ones to turn in, will be announced weekly in class and
by email.
There is a class email list to which you have been automatically subscribed
if you have an FSU email account, ECO-5005-01@garnet.acns.fsu.edu. Email
sent to that address will go to all students registered for the course
plus me. If you want to email me only, send to jcobbe@coss.fsu.edu. If
you prefer to use a non-FSU email account, you should get an FSU account,
and then forward that mail to your other account via registering the forwarding
address at http://register.acns.fsu.edu/CARS/forward.html.
My office hours are listed as MTWRF 9 - 10 a.m., but I am usually on
campus all day most days; if you want to see me at some other time, email
me with a suggested time for an appointment.
Parkin also has a website and a CD of exercises/problems etc. The end
of most chapters in the book suggests some web-based exercises. These may
well be very useful, especially to increase familiarity with actual numbers
about the real world economy, but we will not discuss them in class unless
there is strong student demand to do so.
Text: Michael Parkin, Economics [5th
Edition].
Grading: Each written assignment will be fairly short, but there
are a lot of them [should be 16]. They will all be graded, and the best
13 will contribute 65% of your course grade. At the end of the semester,
there will be a time-limited take-home essay/problem final, allowing some
choice. This will contribute 25% of your course grade. The remaining 10%
will be awarded on the basis of quantity and quality of class participation.
Outline/Schedule: [I've not used this text in this class before;
this schedule is tentative, if we get behind we may drop some less important
topics, and I will keep you informed where we are, but this is an initial
plan for covering the whole book]
1: T 31 A: Chapters 1 and 2
2: R 2 S: Chapter 3
3: T 7 S: Chapter 4
4: R 9 S: Chapter 5
5: T 14 S: Chapter 6
6: R 16 S: Chapter 7
7: T 21 S: Chapter 8 and 9
8: R 23 S: Chapter 10
9: T 28 S: Chapter 11
10: R 30 S: Chapter 12
11: T 5 O: Chapter 13
12: R 7 O: Chapter 15 and 16
13: T 12 O: Chapter 17
14: R 14 O: Chapter 18 and 19
15: T 19 O: Chapter 20 and 21
16: R 21 O: Chapter 20 and 21
17: T 26 O: Chapter 22
18: R 28 O: Chapter 23 and 24
19: T 2 N: Chapter 25
20: R 4 N: Chapter 26
21: T 9 N: Chapters 27 and 28
R 11 N: Armistice Day, no class
22: T 16 N: Chapter 29
23: R 18 N: Chapters 30 and 31
24: T 23 N: Chapter 32
R 25 N: Thanksgiving Day, no class
25: T 30 N: Chapter 33
26: R 2 D: Chapter 34 and 35
27: T 7 D: Chapter 36
28: R 9 D: Chapter 37
Take home final, time-limited, to be discussed in class.