PURPOSE:	Broad overview of international economics and the international economy
Prerequisites:	Econ 101 and 102 - Principles of Microeconomics and Macroeconomics Not Econ 401 or 402 - Intermediate micro and macro theory
Intended for:	Students not concentrating in economics Economics concentrators not ready to specialize in international economics (Economics concentrators may take this course and later take Econ 441 and 442.)
Content:	Compared to most economics courses, this one has: -Less emphasis on theory. You'll learn about theory, but you won't learn to use the tools of economic theory, other than supply and demand. -More emphasis on the real world, viewed through the news and on the Internet. -Less emphasis on problem sets. Homework assignments (Study Questions) will be optional and ungraded. -Much more emphasis on reading.

The textbook for the course is
Gerber, James, International Economics, 7th edition 2018.
  (You are welcome to use an earlier edition instead, if you prefer. Pages are listed for the 7th and 6th editions; for earlier ones, you are on your own.

There are also a large number of shorter readings. Most of these are accessible on the web, and links to them are provided here for you to view them online or to download and print. The few readings that are not in Gerber and not publicly available on the web will be posted under Files in Canvas with links from this syllabus.

Finally, you will also be expected to keep up with the current international economic news. For that purpose you should read regularly some news source with good coverage of international economic news. You do not necessarily have to subscribe to anything, although that may make it easier to keep up. Good sources of international economic news are:

• Wall Street Journal daily newspaper
• The Economist weekly magazine (that calls itself a newspaper)
• The Financial Times daily newspaper from London

If you wish to subscribe to any of these, you may do so online. There are many other good things to read, including the New York Times, but these do not have as much international economic news. I also post links to news items on my website.

We will devote part of one class each week to discussion of items in the news, and these items will also be included in a small way on exams. I will post particular news items on the course web site, which you should read for that purpose.

• Questions on Readings: For each reading other than the textbook, I provide several questions on the course website. You can access these directly from the online syllabus by clicking on "Qs". I suggest that you use these questions immediately after finishing a reading to see if you know the answers, and if not, then go back to the reading to find the answers (I will not be posting them). Material on exams that is related to the readings will usually come from these questions.
• Study Questions: For each lecture, I provide a set of questions, a mix of multiple choice and short answer, similar to and sometimes the same as what will appear on exams. Since some of these questions come from material in lecture that may not have been covered in the assigned readings, you should use them to study after you've attended the lecture. I will post answers to these usually about a week after the lecture.
• Slides: I will post the powerpoint slides both before and after each lecture. Those posted before will include handout formats for you to print and take notes, if you wish, as well as the slides themselves. I tend to revise these slides up to a few minutes before class, so these will not be exactly the same as what I will present. Those will be posted after class.
• Glossary: If you come across terms in your reading that you're not sure you understand, be they individual words or expressions of several, one place you can look for answers is my online Glossary of International Economics. I began assembling this over twenty years ago, originally just for this course, but I have continued to add to it and expand it over the years.
• Podcasts: For the last year or so, the Peterson Institute for International Economics" has provided weekly podcasts, Trade Talks, discussing topics of international trade policy. This course is about all of international economics, not just trade policy, but for those particular topics you might find this useful and of interest. It goes much more deeply into the trade policy actions of the Trump Administration than I will have time to do in class.

POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

This course adheres to the policies on academic integrity, graded assignments, and religious holidays of the Department of Economics. See Policies and Procedures.

GSI

This course is lecture-only, and it does not have any section meetings. However, there will be a Graduate Student Instructor available, one of whose jobs will be to help students with the material. The GSI will hold regular office hours, as follows:

GSI:		Huayu Xu
e-mail:		xuhy@umich.edu
office:		102 Lorch
hours:		Tuesdays 9:00 - 10:00 AM Wednesdays 10:00 - 11:00 AM