International Trade and Finance

International Trade and Finance
Economic analysis of the mechanisms, problems, institutions, and policies of trade among countries. Financial and monetary arrangements that facilitate trade.
ECON
257
 Hours3.0 Credit, 3.0 Lecture, 0.0 Lab
 PrerequisitesECON 110
 TaughtFall
 ProgramsContaining ECON 257
Course Outcomes

Econ 257 students will be able to:

  1. Explain the key developments (models) in the intellectual history of the study of the patterns of trade in goods and services from Adam Smith through the present.
  2. Broadly discuss the evidence which supports or is contrary to the application of these developments to particular countries and goods and services.
  3. Analyze policy within the context of these models in order to gain insights about the patterns of trade.
  4. Analyze the gains from international trade with these key models and understand the political economy of trade (who gains and who loses from trade).
  5. Analyze the patterns, gains, and losses from international trade (migration) in financial and direct foreign investment and labor migration in the short and long runs.
  6. Analyze the reasons for international outsourcing portions of production and the gains and losses from doing so.
  7. Identify how trade in goods, services, and capital enter the international income accounts and the balance of payments.
  8. Discuss how exchange rates affect trade and how trade, fiscal, and monetary policy affects exchange rates.
  9. Explain the essential differences in fiscal and monetary effects for floating and fixed exchange rates.
  10. Broadly discuss the development of U.S. trade policy and the world institutions that support international trade and finance.