History

Created 3/5/1996
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Economics 115; Fall 1996; TTh 2:00-3:30;
1 LeConte

by

Brad DeLong

• Slouching Towards Utopia, the manuscript (when I get it done). My first attempt at writing an economic history of the twentieth century...

• World's Richest People, 1999
• Po Bronson on Silicon Valley
• Nietzsche and Hitler
• The auxilliary reader (of articles and selections, either from Odin Readers at 2146 Center St. or at Moffitt).
• Books (from the ASUC store; or at Moffitt)

  Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward (New York: Penguin).
  
  George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1958 [orig. pub. 1937]) ISBN 0-15-676750-3.
  
  John Maynard Keynes, Essays in Persuasion(New York: W.W. Norton, 1963 [orig. pub. 1932]), ISBN 0-393-00190-3.
  
  Charles Kindleberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (New York: Basic Books, 1978) ISBN 0-465-04402-6

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Syllabus

Part A: Overview

• August 27: Introduction: Slouching Toward Utopia
  Keynes, "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren" (pp. 358-373) in Essays in Persuasion
• August 29: Wealth and Luxury: Prosperity Beyond the Dreams of Previous Avarice
  Bellamy, Looking Backward
• September 3: Causes and Consequences of Twentieth Century Growth
• September 5: Power and Violence: 150 Million Killed by Their Own Governments
  Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Reader)
• September 10: Us and Them: The Growing Economic Gulf Separating Nations
  DeLong, "Productivity Growth, Convergence, and Welfare" (Reader)
• Tuesday September 12: Policy and Prosperity: Managing Industrial Market Economies

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Part B: The End of the Nineteenth Century

• September 17: Pre-WWI: Living Standards, Exceptional America, and Britain's Decline
  selections from Byington, Homestead (Reader)
• September 19: Pre-WWI: Industrial Structure; International Trade, Finance, and Migration
  Kindleberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes, pp. 3-51
  Barry Eichengreen, Introduction to The Gold Standard in Theory and History (Reader)

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Part C: Descent into Hell?

• September 24: World War I, 1914-1918
  Eichengreen, "The Wartime Transition", pp. 67-99 of Golden Fetters (Reader)
• September 26: Politics: Socialism and Fascism
  Keynes, Essays in Persuasion, "A Short View of Russia" (pp. 297-311)
• October 1: Restoring Monetary Stability
  selections from Keynes, Essays in Persuasion, "Inflation" (pp. 77-104), "Auri Sacra Fames" (pp. 181-185), "Alternative Aims in Monetary Policy" (pp. 186-212)
• October 3: America's Roaring Twenties; Seeds of a Great Depression?
  Kindleberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes, pp. 52-96
  Eichengreen, "The Legacy of Hyperinflation", pp. 125-152 of Golden Fetters (Reader)
  Keynes, Essays in Persuasion, "The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill" (pp. 244-270)

Tuesday October 8: No Class--Essay Due (typewritten; 1,000-2,000 words)

• October 10: The Stock Market Crash--and After (lecture: Kris Mitchener)
  Keynes, Essays in Persuasion, "The Consequences to the Banks of the Collapse of Money Values" (pp. 168-180)
  Kindleberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes, pp. 97-160
• October 15: The Great Slump
  Romer, "The Nation in Depression" (Reader)
  selections from Lester Chandler, America's Greatest Depression (Reader)
  Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier
• October 17: Nazis and Soviets
  selections from Shirer, The Nightmare Years; (Reader)
  selections from Koestler, Darkness at Noon (Reader)
• October 22: Climbing Out of the Depression
  selections from Stein, The Fiscal Revolution in America (Reader)
• October 24: Falling into World War II
  selections from Alan Milward, War, Economy, and Society 1939-1945 (reader).
• October 29: Pre-Midterm Review

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Midterm: Thursday October 31

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Part D: Present at the Creation

• November 5: The Reconstruction of Europe
  DeLong and Eichengreen, "The Marshall Plan" (Reader)
• November 7: The Post-WWII Settlement: "Mixed Economy"; Thirty Glorious Years
  Keynes, Essays in Persuasion, "The End of Laissez-Faire" (pp. 312-322)
  selections from Stein, The Fiscal Revolution in America (Reader)
  Kindleberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes, pp. 161-226
  Jaynes,"The Labor Market Status of Black Americans" (Reader)
• November 12: The Nonaligned Detour
  selections from Bates, Markets and States in Tropical Africa (Reader)
  Fishlow, "The Latin American State," (Reader)
  DeLong and Summers, "Equipment Investment and Economic Growth" (Reader)

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Part E: Yesterday and Today

• November 14: Oil, Inflation, Disorder, Ecology
  DeLong, "America's Peacetime Inflation" (Reader)
  Stanley Fischer, "Introduction to Symposium" (Reader)
  Olson, "The Productivity Slowdown, the Oil Shocks, and the Real Cycle," (Reader)
• November 19: Rolling Back the Welfare State
  selections from Greider, The Education of David Stockman (Reader)
  Martin Feldstein, American Economic Policy in the 1980s (Reader)
• November 21: East Asia's Rise (lecture: Chang-Tai Hsieh)
  selections from The East Asian Miracle (Reader)
• November 26: Russia's Fall (???)
  Ericson, "The Classical Soviet-Type Economy" (Reader)
• December 3: Tomorrow: Development, Ecology, Equality, Technology
  Freeman, "Are Your Wages Set in Beijing?" (Reader)
  Nordhaus, "Reflections on the Economics of Climate Change," (Reader)

• December 5: No Class
• December 10: General Review

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Final Exam

Thursday, December 12, 12:30-3:30 PM. If you cannot make the final exam, you do not belong in this course.

Brad DeLong <delong@econ.berkeley.edu>; office hours Tuesday 9:30-11:00 AM, Evans 601

Laura Giuliano <giuliano@econ.berkeley.edu>; Evans ???-?

• W 2-3 405 Davis [107]
• W 4-5 3105 Etcheverry [108]

Chang-Tai Hsieh <cth@econ.berkeley.edu>; Evans 608-12

• Th 5-6 5 Evans [104]
• W 9-10 3109 Etcheverry [106]

Kris Mitchener <kris@econ.berkeley.edu>; Evans 508-3

• Th 8-9 103 GPB [102]
• T 8-9 3105 Etcheverry [103]

Paper; due October 8

Typed or word-processed, 1000-2000 words.

Reread those parts of Edward Bellamy's book, Looking Backward, where he tries to make his readers see the material abundance, social peace, and civilization that he sees in the late twentieth century.

Try your hand at Bellamy's task--trying to make real a civilization at a very different level of material prosperity from that of his readers, and using the narrator's reactions to that civilization as a way of passing judgment. Either (a) deposit a person from a century in the past into the real late twentieth century as we know it (rather than as Bellamy imagined it), or (b) deposit a person from today into Bellamy's world: any particular place on the globe you choose at the end of the nineteenth century.

Alternatively--if you are very, very brave--you can deposit a person from the late twentieth century into the world in 2100.

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Midterm; October 31

A "police the reading" midterm.

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Final; Thursday, December 12, 12:30-3:30 PM. If you cannot make the final, you do not belong in this course.

One-fourth "police the reading"; one-fourth multiple choice IDs; one-fourth short answers on concepts; one-fourth long essay.

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Grading Policy

40% final
20% midterm
20% essay
10% in-class quizzes
10% section participation

• Robert Bates, Markets and States in Tropical Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981) (Bus & Econ HD2118 1981.B37), pp. 1-61
• Margaret Byington, Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town (New York: Charities Publication Committee, 1910) (Main Stack HN80.P6.P6 v.4), pp. 131-57, 201-17, 233-5
• Lester Chandler, America's Greatest Depression 1929-1941 (New York: Harper and Row), pp. 31-53.
• J. Bradford DeLong, "Productivity Growth, Convergence, and Welfare", American Economic Review 78:5 (1988) (Bus & Econ HB1.A6), pp. 1138-53.
• J. Bradford DeLong, "Depressions" (ms.)
• J. Bradford DeLong and Barry Eichengreen, "The Marshall Plan: History's Most Successful Structural Adjustment Program", in R. Dornbusch, W. Nolling, and R. Layard, eds., Postwar Economic Reconstruction and Lessons for the East Today (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993) (Main Stack HC240.P634 1993).
• J. Bradford DeLong and Lawrence H. Summers, "Equipment Investment and Economic Growth", Quarterly Journal of Economics (1991) (Bus & Econ HB1.Q3).
• Barry Eichengreen, Introduction to Barry Eichengreen, ed., The Gold Standard in Theory and History (London: Methuen, 1985) (Moffitt HG297.G63 1985), pp.1-29.
• Barry Eichengreen, Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) (Bus & Econ HG297.E53 1992).
  • "The Legacy of Hyperinflation", pp. 125-152
  • "The Wartime Transition", pp. 67-99
• Richard Ericson, "The Classical Soviet-Type Economy", Journal of Economic Perspectives5:4 (1991) (Main Stack HB1.J795), pp. 11-27.
• Martin Feldstein, ed., American Economic Policy in the 1980s (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1994) (Bus & Econ HC106.8.A439 1994), selections from pp. 1-71.
• Stanley Fischer, "Introduction to Symposium on Productivity Growth," Journal of Economic Perspectives 2:4 (1988), pp. 3-7.
• Albert Fishlow, "The Latin American State," Journal of Economic Perspectives 4:3 (1990), pp. 61-74.
• Richard Freeman, "Are Your Wages Set in Beijing?" Journal of Economic Perspectives 5:3 (195), pp. 15-32.
• William Greider, The Education of David Stockman (New York : Dutton, 1982) (Main Stack HC106.8.G73 1982), pp. 14-69.
• Gerald Jaynes,"The Labor Market Status of Black Americans, 1939-1985," Journal of Economic Perspectives 4:4 (1990), pp. 9-24.
• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New York : International Publishers, 1948) (Main Stack HX276.M3 1948a).
• Alan Milward, War, Economy, and Society 1939-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), pp. 55-98, 99-104, 109-131, 169-75, 193-207.
• William Nordhaus, "Reflections on the Economics of Climate Change," Journal of Economic Perspectives 7:4 (1993), pp. 11-25
• Mancur Olson, "The Productivity Slowdown, the Oil Shocks, and the Real Cycle," Journal of Economic Perspectives 2:4 (1988), pp. 43-69.
• Christina Romer, "The Nation in Depression", Journal of Economic Perspectives (1993) (Main Stack HB1.J795), pp. 19-39
• William Shirer, The Nightmare Years (Boston: Little Brown, 1984) (Main Stack PS3537.H913.Z4617 1984), pp. 82-109, 146-66.
• Herbert Stein, The Fiscal Revolution in America (Rev. Ed.) (Washington, D.C. : AEI Press, 1990) (Bus & Econ HJ257.S78 1990), pp. 3-38, 454-68.
• The East Asian Miracle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) (Main Stack HC460.5.E275 1993), pp. 1-26, 27-77.
  
  
• Books (from the ASUC store; or at Moffitt)

  Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward (New York: Penguin, 1982) (Main Stack PS1086.L6 1982).
  
  George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1958 [orig. pub. 1937]) ISBN 0-15-676750-3 (Main Stack HD8390.O7 1958a).
  
  John Maynard Keynes, Essays in Persuasion(New York: W.W. Norton, 1963 [orig. pub. 1932]), ISBN 0-393-00190-3
  
  Charles Kindleberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (New York: Basic Books, 1978) ISBN 0-465-04402-6.

History

Created 3/5/1996
Go to Brad De Long's Home Page