What you will study
The core content of this module will be organised around five key global challenges, with each block engaging with one global challenge:
Block 1 – Understanding Economic Crises
This introductory block will begin to scope the character of multiple economic crises that have occurred over the past century, and the mainstream economic theories of economic crises and the policy responses these have informed. The block will also explore the question of how economies might recover from crises by emphasising the systemic nature and historical specificity of crises as well as the interrelation between economic, social and environmental crises. Issues including the mediation of global capital accumulation by the global financial system; the role of actors and institutions in relation to structural change; and how different economic organisations might result in more sustainable and less crisis-prone societies will be explored.
Block 2 – Global Inequalities
The second block focuses on global inequalities, in particular those between countries. The block commences with a discussion of the key contemporary empirical aspects of global inequalities that will be unpacked across the block. This includes a critical assessment of the convergence/divergence hypotheses and other core elements such as the global division of labour to investigate the reconfiguration of global circuits of production, national income levels and welfare regimes and patterns of consumption. Following this will be a discussion of the history of industrialisation, which will incorporate an assessment of this process across both time and space. The block will then address current economic approaches applied to the ways that countries interact and that frame the nature of global economic relations, and how these shape patterns of inequalities, including competing perspectives on the role of international trade, global value chains, and global economic governance.
Block 3 – Social Inequalities
This block starts by examining different types of inequality and how they manifest within countries (e.g., income, savings, participation in social life, health, education) across different dimensions (gender, age, class, race, disability). It will analyse data from around the world (balancing between high-income and low-income countries) to map social inequalities. The block will then explain the forming of inequality, its pervasiveness and its path dependency and cumulative effect over the life-course. The third part of the block examines policy interventions to tackle inequalities, their relative merits and some perverse effects spanning from tax and benefit policies to the less-well documented impacts of industrial and monetary policy.
Block 4 – The Economics of Health
This block focuses on the way that different economic perspectives are applied to the issue of health, and in particular, health inequalities between and within countries. The block commences with a brief introduction to the social gradient with respect to most (in fact, almost all) health outcomes, an overview of the social determinants of health. Following this, the block looks at how health-related behaviour is modelled through the application of neoclassical consumer theory and, behavioural approaches that seek to incentivise or provide nudges towards positive health-related decisions. The block will then move away from more micro/individualistic perspectives to systemic approaches that engage with how health inequalities are produced and reproduced. The block will also critically engage with the role of broader macro-level process (such as neoliberalism) and different actors in shaping responses to health issues. Finally, the block will cover the standard mainstream Health Economics literature with a focus on Cost-Benefit-Analyses that are used to evaluate competing health interventions.
Block 5 – The Economics of the Environment
The final block will focus on the economics of the environment. It draws methods and theories from various economic perspectives that study the environment: environmental economics, ecological economics, natural resource economics and political economy. It will cover how economists understand and analyse environmental issues, such as climate change, water scarcity and pollution. This includes ideas from microeconomics, such as public goods, social choice, Pareto efficiency and externalities. It will also address alternative understandings of drivers of environmental problems from macroeconomics, such as debates around the role of economic growth, planetary boundaries and environmental destruction.