The purpose of this course is to enable students to understand the 21st Century world economy.
Students will be introduced to the global distribution of world GDP by country, and changes in
this pattern since the turn of the century. Global macroeconomic interconnections among the
significant players will be examined in terms of commodity trade flows and FDI flows, and
country rankings by GDP in current USD, constant dollars, Purchasing Power Parity, per capita
GDP, and Human Development Index, among other indicators. The course will also deal with
major country alliances such as BRICS and the EU, and examine the role of major older
institutions such as IMF and World Bank and WTO, and the newly-formed Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank. Students will study world-wide trends in inequality of income and wealth, the
incidence of poverty, and the different forms poverty takes. For detailed topics covered, please
refer to the ‘Learning Objectives’ section.
- Teacher: Irina Kovaleva