The primary goal of the course is to familiarize students with recent work in international economics.
Learning objective
The primary goal of the course is to familiarize students with recent work in international economics. While traditional text books are largely concerned with models where production cost differences between countries (through differences in factor productivity or in relative factor endowments) are the main source of gains from trade, I will assume that students are familiar with these concepts and only briefly touch on them. The focus will be on models where the main reason for trade are consumer preferences and their love of variety and its major impediments are transport costs. Covering models of trade only, of trade and multinational firms, and of factor mobility and agglomeration, students will get a good overview of key contributions in international economics within the last quarter of a century.
Literature
Copies of the original articles and relevant chapters of books will be made available to participants of the course.
Performance assessment
Performance assessment information (valid until the course unit is held again)
Performance assessment as a semester course