@Mail
This course has no formal prerequisites, but some background in economics and economic history is highly desirable.
The course is aimed at providing the students with the conceptual and analytical tools necessary to understand the historical trajectory of global development from 1800 to the present. The key question this course addresses is: What are the effects of globalization on poverty and inequality around the world, and how do those effects vary within and across countries? This question requires defining and measuring “poverty” and “inequality” in rigorous terms.
Other aims of the course are ((learning objectives):
- To understand the strengths and weaknesses of the basic theoretical perspectives on global development; - To understand the roles of the developed world in shaping the societies and policies of the developing world; - To understand multiple perspectives on global social problems; - To understand the different ‘faces’ of global inequality; - To understand the major effects of development and globalization on social inequalities among nations, regions, classes, genders, and races; - To understand the roles of corporations, states, and civil society in shaping global development and social change; - To understand the interrelations of the physical environment, global development, and social inequalities; - To acquire an appreciation of the interrelationships between our lives and those of people in developing countries.
This course analyzes the different aspects and dimensions of globalization (economic, political and social) in a historical perspective. The central subject of the course is global inequality, between nations and within nations. Over the last years, inequality has become a much more important topic in the press, social networks and academic publications. Should inequality between nations concern us more or less than inequality within them? And how is inequality today different from inequality of the past? This course aims to understand these problems, studying the origins of global economic inequality and the recent dynamics. This course introduces students to the relations among growth, inequality and globalization of economic markets from a historical point of view. Among topics for study are the world distribution of income, across and within nations; concepts of inequality (income, wealth, opportunity, mobility); the consequences of inequality for growth and for political institutions in developed and developing countries.
PART I. (From week 1 to week 6) The globalization in historical perspective. The Globalization Debate.
PART II. (From week 7 to week 10) Inequality within Nations and the Role of Global Markets How much and why within-national inequality increased in the last thirty years?
PART III. (From week 11 to week 12) What is global inequality? Why are some countries rich and others poor? What are the causes of growth in poor countries? What is development anyway? Poverty and Inequality: Concepts and Measurement
- Kevin H. O'Rourke and Jeffrey G. Williamson, Globalization and History The Evolution of a Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Economy, Mit Pr, 2001 (ISBN: 978-0-262-65059-5). - Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Belknap, 2014 (ISBN: 978-0-674-43000-6). - Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail. The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, Crown Publishers, 2012 (ISBN: 978-0-307-71922-5).
This course is being conducted in a “hybrid format” that is, a combination of in-class lectures and classroom discussions.
All students will be evaluated on the basis of a one-hour written examination. For students who attend the course a midterm written examination is foreseen. Students who pass this midterm written examination can make a final written examination on the second part of the course. The midterm will cover all materials up to the midterm exam, and the final exam will cover all material since the midterm.
Erasmus students who have difficulties with the Italian language are allowed to take written examination in English.