ECN 355T Political Economy: Theories and Issues (Switzerland)
This course is designed to introduce students to the foundations of political economy. In this course, students will study the economic system from a critical, historical and interdisciplinary perspective and in doing so will gain a greater understanding of our current economic system. Students will learn about different theories in political economy and how these theories help us understand the transformation of a pre-capitalist system to a capitalist system. Some of the schools of thoughts that students will be introduced to are Classical, Institutional, Marxian, Post-Keynesian and Austrian. Students will also explore the works of Polanyi, Kalecki and Minsky. This course will also draw from these various theories and examine their implications for different issues that arise from the current economic formation. Some of the issues that will be considered in this course are social and economic inequality, financialization and political economy of cryptocurrencies, gender inequality, the relationship of the economic sphere to the ecology, political economy of poverty and uneven development, food regimes and globalisation, and labour and unemployment. This course will allow students to analyse major contemporary issues from different political economy perspectives.
This course will also have a travel component, where students will visit sites in Switzerland to understand the position of Switzerland in the development of the capitalist system (example: Mont Pelerin). In addition, students will also investigate some of the issues discussed in this course like ecological economics, postcolonial economics and political economy of cryptocurrencies by visiting relevant sites like organic farms, the crypto valley and international organisations. Site visits will tentatively include visits to the Geneva, Zurich and Zug regions.