Wikipedia:WikiProject United States Public Policy/Courses/Spring 2011/International Trade and Strategy (Anh Tran)

Course description

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This course provides you with economics tools to evaluate policies in international trade, foreign investment, immigration, exchange rate, fiscal and monetary programs. We will conduct research, present, debate about these policies. We will use Wikipedia as a vehicle and outlet for our research. The Wikipedia Foundation provides extensive resources in this course to make our work fun and rewarding.

Textbook

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We will use the superb book International Economics: Theory and Policy (Any recent edition is ok) by two leading scholars in the field Paul Krugman and Maurice Obstfeld. The focus on this text will provide a coherent and systemic framework to understand international economics (and save you money on the course pack too).

Learning Plan

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This is an active-learning course. It provides a platform for you to learn through conducting research, presenting your findings, learning from class discussion and sharing it with the world. Each student will conduct two research projects and make two presentations about them. The written output of the first project will be a mid-term paper (5-10 pages). The written output of the second project is a complete Wikipedia article. You need to conduct extensive research to do these tasks. You will receive support from your classmates, Wikipedia Ambassadors and the instructor. Students can team up to do these projects together if they like.

Assignment overview

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We will devote Week 1& 2 to get an overall perspective of international trade, become familiar with economics graphical models, and learn basic Wikipedia skills. Students might volunteer to make presentations on any trade topic in a class during these two weeks for extra credit. From Week 3 on, each student will be assigned to 2 of the above 12 themes. Students will select a real-world topic (or policy) relevant to each of the assigned themes and conduct research on them. Each class will consist of two sessions. The first session (20-30 minutes) is a presentation on a real-world topic or policy, which is presented by a student and discussed by the whole class. The second session is an interactive lecture to provide you a conceptual framework for the theme of the week, presented by the instructor and discussed by the class. In both sessions, students are encouraged to question, comment, disagree, and share views and experience.

Assignment timeline

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Forthcoming.

Students

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This is a list of the students in your class (or rather their Wikipedia usernames), along with their Wikipedia articles (which students will select at the appropriate time).