International economics
Undergraduate · Economics
Syllabus focus
Topics typically covered
Standard syllabus
Trade theory and policy
- Ricardian and Heckscher–Ohlin models (as taught)
- Specific-factors and new trade ideas (survey)
- Tariffs, quotas, and VERs; welfare analysis
- Political economy of protection
- Trade agreements and WTO survey
- Offshoring/FDI concepts (intro)
Exchange rates and open macro
- Balance of payments accounting
- Spot/forward markets and interest parity (intro)
- Flexible vs fixed exchange-rate regimes
- Mundell–Fleming / IS–LM–BP frameworks (as taught)
- Currency crises and sudden stops survey
- Twin deficits and global imbalances
Integration and development
- Customs unions and trade creation/diversion
- Migration economics survey
- Trade and growth / inequality debates
- International financial architecture (IMF/World Bank survey)
- Sanctions and geopolitical trade (intro)
- Case studies: EU, USMCA, China trade episodes
STEM / applied
Quantitative practice
- Compute comparative-advantage gains from given data
- Tariff incidence diagrams with numbers
- PPP and real exchange-rate calculations (intro)
- Spreadsheet BOP identities
- Interpret trade and FX time series
- Problem sets spanning trade + open macro
Applications
- Policy briefs on tariff proposals
- Country external vulnerability dashboards
- Multinational firm location decisions (survey)
- Communicate tradeoffs to non-specialists
- Critique popular trade myths with models
- Capstone: analyze a country’s trade/FX episode
Notes
Some courses split trade vs international finance across terms; this README covers the usual combined undergrad elective.