PURPOSE:	The aim of this course is to teach you a lot about the economics -- and a little about the institutions -- of international trade and trade policy. The course is companion to SPP/Econ 542, International Finance Policy, which deals with international macroeconomic topics such as the balance of trade and balance of payments, determination of exchange rates, and international macroeconomic policies. Each course will also include the bare essentials of the other course so that if you take only one of them, you won't be lost in the world economy. The course is mainly about trade policy. You will learn what trade policies are, how they are used by the United States and other countries, and how their use is restricted by international agreements. More importantly you will learn how to use economic modeling to understand the effects of trade policies and to quantify these effects. Along the way you will also learn about the institutions of the world economy, especially those that have to do with trade. And you will learn a little bit about the economic theories of why nations trade, and why they gain from trade.
Prerequisite:	PubPol/Econ 555 or equivalent course in intermediate microeconomics
Organization:	The course meets twice a week, Mondays ad Wednesdays, 8:30-10:00 AM, in room 1220 Weill.

TEXTs

The textbooks for the course are
Krugman, Paul R., Maurice Obstfeld, and Marc Melitz ("KOM" below), one of the following as explained below:
International Economics: Theory and Policy, 9th edition, Addison Wesley, 2012, isbn-13 #978-0-13-801896-2
International Economics: Theory and Policy, 10th edition, Pearson, 2015, isbn-13 #978-0-13-801896-2
International Trade: Theory and Policy, 10th edition, Pearson, 2015, isbn-13 #978-0-13-342367-9

Jackson, John H., The World Trading System: Law and Policy of International Economic Relations, Second Edition, MIT Press, 1997, isbn #0-262-60027-7.

There will also be a number of additional readings that are required. All are available under Files/Resources/Readings on Canvas. Most of the readings are also available free to the public on the web, through links included on this syllabus. A few readings are available through subscription sites, including ones subscribed to by U of M (e.g., JSTOR, Proquest). And a few are available only on Canvas.

Because of the speed with which issues evolve, readings selected in advance can never cover all of the latest developments. We will therefore spend some time each week discussing recent news related to trade and trade policy. You should follow current issues of international trade policy by reading daily periodicals such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, or Financial Times or weekly publications such as Business Week, or The Economist. Student subscriptions to these publications are available at reduced prices. I also post links to relevant news items on my personal website. We will devote some time each week to discussing the news.

NOTES on the Krugman, Obstfeld, Melitz text:

The most recent edition, the 10th, came out last year, 2015. Unlike previous editions, this is in three forms: one that combines international trade and finance like previous editions (which I ordered for you, but the publisher did not send me); a second that covers only trade (that they did), and a third that covers only international finance. If you intend to buy this new edition, you might want to choose based on whether you plan to take PubPol 542, International Financial Policy, at some point, since it will likely use the same book and you'll save money by buying the combined text rather than the two separate ones. However, 542 is not being offered this year. Alternatively, you might want to buy a used copy of the 9th edition from 2012, or even an earlier one. Coverage should be roughly comparable.

I provide chapter and page numbers for the trade-only version of the 10th edition and for the 9th edition. If you have the combined 10th edition, I suspect that the chapters and page numbers will be very similar to the 9th edition.