Trade and tariffs have become central to American politics, making this a good time to review or extend our understanding of the facts and principles surrounding trade and its governance. ISPS will sponsor a short course (led by Amit Khandelwal, Giovanni Maggi, Sam Kortum, and Lorenzo Caliendo) for faculty members who are interested in learning about trade and trade policy. The course will meet for five consecutive weeks, Thursday mornings from 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM at ISPS, 77 Prospect, Room A001. A light breakfast will be provided.
All interested faculty across the university are welcome. The course will cover basic theoretical models and empirical results in international trade. The goal is to provide faculty interested in understanding trade policy with a good foundation in the intuitions and basic findings in the academic literature on trade, including the range of policy options considered and a background for interpreting claims about alternative trade policies. The presentations will include development and analysis of mathematical models, and so a background in microeconomics and calculus will be helpful.
Course Schedule:
| date | presenters and topics |
|---|---|
| OCT 9 | Amit Khandelwal (Economics): How do tariffs work? Under what conditions are tariffs passed through to consumers as higher prices, or absorbed by producers? What is the micro evidence on these questions? Link to background reading |
| OCT 23 | Giovanni Maggi (Economics): How do tariffs affect consumer welfare in theory? When do tariffs make sense in principle, and when are they harmful? What is the economics underlying a trade war? |
| OCT 30 | Sam Kortum (Economics): What goes on within a canonical quantitative trade model used to assess the impact of tariffs? What does such a model tell us about the likely effect of the recent tariffs? |
| NOV 6* | Lorenzo Caliendo (SOM): How do we enrich these models to account for multiple sectors, intermediate goods, trade imbalances, and costly labor mobility? What are the quantitative implications? |
| NOV 13 | Panel Discussion with Q&A |
*The November 6 session is 8:00-9:00 AM. All other sessions are 8:30-9:30 AM.
ISPS supports research and events on democracy, governance, and public policy. This is the second annual ISPS short course for faculty. Thank you again to Kyle Jensen (SOM) for his course on LLMs.