Category: Global Markets and Institutions, with Prof. Jim Anton, is a multi-term course focusing on the macroeconomic drivers that drive the creation of wealth. The pre-reading for this class is fairly straightforward: there’s some textbook reading to introduce the necessary macroeconomic concepts and definitions, and two case studies.
The first case study, “Institutions” from the Journal of Economic Perspectives, outlines how economies have developed over time and compares systems that have evolved with institutions that have crumbled. The second case study, “Botswana: A Diamond in the Rough” from Harvard Business School, discusses the value of the diamond trade in increasing per capita wealth, with nearly 10% growth per annum since the country gained independence in 1966.
I haven’t gotten to the case studies yet, but I have done a significant portion of the textbook reading. Here are some of my reactions:
- This textbook is co-written by Ben Bernanke. I wish I hadn’t read that, as I’m not particularly a fan of his current role as a pseudo-politician. I should be able contain my bias though, as the textbook material isn’t anywhere near controversial.
- The textbook (in my opinion) is similar to a textbook that you would see at an intermediate undergraduate level. This works well, as it introduces concepts as if some business knowledge is already present, but doesn’t overwhelm like a graduate textbook for an Econ degree does.
- The textbook is a summary re-print, which is slightly disappointing. Would’ve been nice to see the diagrams and graphs in color.
- I can’t believe how much I don’t remember!
My last reaction is the funniest to me. My professional career to date has relied on the credential of “Master of Arts in Economics” on my resume. I’ve gone from being an economist in grad school, to an econometrician at my first job, to currently being a statistician/general quant guy in support of marketing campaigns. Before starting the pre-reading, I knew I needed to stay humble; just because I’ve studied economics extensively in the past doesn’t mean I could slack off. Well, cracking the text book took care of the humbling for me, as I don’t remember the formal definitions of most of the material!
Nevertheless, I greatly look forward to this class.
Marco-economics seems more exciting to me than the Micro version. The book is pretty good, like you, I wish some of the graphs had been in color. It's kind of hard to see what they intended to be in color in black and white. (The graph showing budget deficit in chapter 1 is particularly disappointing)
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