Industrialization, urbanization, and economic growth in the global North. Locational patterns in manufacturing, retailing trade, and finance. Geographic dynamics of technical change, employment, business organization, resource use, and divisions of labor. Property, labor, and social conflict as geographic forces. Local, national, and continental rivalries in a global economy, and challenges to U.S. dominance.

This course is designed as a comprehensive overview of intermediate microeconomic theory. It covers a number of topics including consumer and demand theory, firm, production and cost theory, competitive market theory, imperfect competition, welfare economics, choice under uncertainty and information. All analysis conducted in the course relies on graphical and algebraic techniques.

This course emphasizes dynamic models of growth and development. Topics covered include: migration, modernization, and technological change; static and dynamic models of political economy; the dynamics of income distribution and institutional change; firm structure in developing countries; development, transparency, and functioning of financial markets; privatization; and banks and credit market institutions in emerging markets.

This is a course for those who are interested in the challenge posed by massive and persistent world poverty, and are hopeful that economists might have something useful to say about this challenge. The questions we will take up include: Is extreme poverty a thing of the past? What is economic life like when living under a dollar per day? Why do some countries grow fast and others fall further behind? Does growth help the poor? Are famines unavoidable? How can we end child labor—or should we? How do we make schools work for poor citizens? How do we deal with the disease burden? Is micro finance invaluable or overrated? Without property rights, is life destined to be "nasty, brutish and short"? Has globalization been good to the poor? Should we leave economic development to the market? Should we leave economic development to non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? Does foreign aid help or hinder? Where is the best place to intervene?