DEV-233: Political Economy and Its Future

Co-taught with Roberto Mangabeira Unger. Daron Acemoglu from MIT will join for three class sessions.

The world’s economic and political order reels under mounting challenges: a slowdown in economic growth and productivity, the climate transition, the aggravation of inequality and the inadequacy of conventional responses to it, the discrediting of neoliberalism, the globalization backlash, the re-emergence of nationalist politics in Europe and the United States, and a contest over the meaning, value, and requirements of democracy. We examine connections among these phenomena and explore alternative ways of thinking about contemporary market economies and their reconstruction. We organize the course around four related themes: the effort to promote socially inclusive economic growth in richer as well as in poorer countries; climate change and the shortcomings of prevailing approaches to the green transition; the nature, fate, and dissemination of the new knowledge-intensive style of production; and the past, present, and future of globalization.

This course is jointly-listed with FAS as GOV-1025 and HLS as LAW-2390.

Note: Recordings of this course will be posted on YouTube.