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January 18, 2005
20050118: Econ 113 Opening Lecture Notes
The opening lecture of every course always completely exhausts me. And today was no exception...
Lecture Outline
- [Housekeeping, administrative, and logistic]
- Why care about American economic history?
- Because we are here; it is important and interesting to know how and why "here" came to be.
- Because America is special:
- Special relative to other countries
- At current exchange rates, six times as well-off as the world average, and thirty-six times as well-off as the bottom quarter.
- At purchasing power parities, three times as well-off as the world average, and roughly seven times as well off as the bottom quarter.
- Digression on differences between CER and PPP calculations
- Special relative to the past
- We have medicine.
- We're not as hungry and malnourished.
- We have many times the number of things: ten times? more?
- Special relative to other countries
- The story of American economic history is a remarkable story: the most successful economic story ever. It's worth studying.
- And you will learn how to apply some of the economic theory you are learning, and what it is good for.
Got through about half of the substance that I wanted to get through, but that's OK--that's not unexpected.
Got a very good group of questions from the floor this time--that's very encouraging.
I follow Marion Fourcade-Gourinchas in LeConte 4, and precede Dariush Zahedi.
Posted by DeLong at January 18, 2005 06:48 PM
Comments
I've always wanted to pose this 'exam' question to economists and get their answers:
"America's economic success can be boiled down to two eras, each with differing reasons for success:-
Pre-WWII:
a) Access to a continent of free land and natural resources.
b) Two oceans separating US from nearest military threat.
Post-WWII:
1) At least 50% of remaining world economy in 1945 .
2) Dollar de-facto world currency and oil denominated in dollars (post 72?)
3) Continental sized single market
4) Large scale immigration of cheap labour and highly skilled labour.
These conditions provide significant and unique economic advantages, independent of economic policy. One might almost say with conditions like that a country would have to work hard to fail.
Between 1945 and 2000, exactly what sort of economic policy would have to have been followed, and for what time period, for the US to fail economically?"
Posted by: MadJock at January 18, 2005 08:17 PM