Economics 503 – International Trade
Meeting Times: Mon. & Wed. 9:30-10:45
Location: BA 303
Instructor: Dr. William Hauk
Office Hours: Mon. & Wed. 3:30-5:00 or by appt.
Phone: 777-6044
Email: hauk@moore.sc.edu
Course Overview:
The goal of this course is familiarize the student with current economic thought on
international trade. Broadly speaking, this course will have two sections – the first on the
theory of international trade, and the second on current policy issues regarding trade. The
first section will cover the scope and extent of international trade, the theory of
comparative advantage, basic models of international trade, the effect of market structure
and subsidies on trade, trade in factors of production and the role of multinational
corporations. The second section will look at forms of trade protection, political
arguments for and against trade protection, trade and developing countries and then will
conclude with a considerable amount of time given to the globalization debate.
The main text for this course will be International Trade by Robert Feenstra and Alan
Taylor (henceforth F&T). During the globalization section of this course, we will read
Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz and In Defense of Globalization by
Jagdish Bhagwati. Prerequisites are Econ 321 (Intermediate Microeconomics) and a
basic understanding of calculus.
Course Grading:
Grades for this course will have four components:
 Aplia problem sets – 25%
 Midterm exam – 30%
 Short paper – 15%
 Final exam – 30%
Class Attendance and Participation:
This is an upper-level course in economics intended for economics majors. The
presumption is that you are here because you want to be here. As a result, students are
expected to attend every class and actively participate in discussions. While you will not
explicitly be graded on attendance, you will find active participation helpful in
developing your understanding for the assignments and exams.
Aplia Problem Sets:
This course will make extensive use of the Aplia online economics package. Students are
expected to immediately register for the online course (please see instructions on the page
attached to the end of the syllabus as well as the “Getting Started with Aplia” sheet that I
will post online) and complete weekly problem sets dealing with the course material.
These problems will generally be due on Sunday evenings, but please see the course
home page on Aplia for precise details.
Midterm Exam:
The midterm exam will take place in class on Wednesday, Oct. 15th. I am generally
reluctant to reschedule exam dates, so please see me soon if you have questions or
concerns. Because the first half of the class is more technical, the format of the exam
will largely be multiple choice and short answer.
Short Paper:
A short paper (6-8 pages, double-spaced, 12 pt font, normal margins) on one of a list of
topics assigned by the instructor will be due towards the end of the semester. The topics
will cover current issues in international trade policy. Students may (but are not required
to) work in groups of up to three on the paper, though there will only be one grade for
each group. Details will follow after the midterm.
Final Exam:
The final exam will take place at the university-scheduled time of 9:00 PM on Saturday,
Dec. 13th. This exam will be non-cumulative in the sense that you will not be explicitly
tested on material from the first half of the course and will be more essay-based, as the
second half of the course is less technical than the first.
Course Schedule and Readings:
Aug. 25 – Introduction to the Course. Read F&T chapter 1.
Aug. 27 – The Ricardian Model #1. Read F&T chapter 2.
Sept. 1 – LABOR DAY – NO CLASS
Sept. 3 – The Ricardian Model #2. Review F&T chapter 2.
Sept. 8 – The Specific Factors Model #1. Read F&T chapter 3.
Sept. 10 – The Specific Factors Model #2. Review F&T chapter 3.
Sept. 15 – The Heckscher-Ohlin Model #1. Read F&T chapter 4.
Sept. 17 – The Heckscher-Ohlin Model #2. Review F&T chapter 4.
Sept. 22 – Trade in Labor and Capital #1. Read F&T chapter 5.
Sept. 24 – Trade in Labor and Capital #2. Review F&T chapter 5.
Sept. 29 – Imperfect Competition and Trade #1. Read F&T chapter 6.
Oct. 1 – Imperfect Competition and Trade #2. Review F&T chapter 6.
Oct. 6 – Foreign Outsourcing and Trade #1. Read F&T chapter 7.
Oct. 8 – Foreign Outsourcing and Trade #2. Review F&T chapter 7.
Oct. 13 – Import Tariffs and Quotas #1. Read F&T chapter 8.
Oct. 15 – MIDTERM EXAM IN CLASS.
Oct. 20 – Import Tariffs and Quotas #2. Review F&T chapter 8.
Oct. 22 – Protection Under Imperfect Competition #1. Read F&T chapter 9.
Oct. 27 – Protection Under Imperfect Competition #2. Review F&T chapter 9.
Oct. 29 – Export Subsidies #1. Read F&T chapter 10.
Nov. 3 – Export Subsidies #2. Review F&T chapter 10.
Nov. 5 – International Agreements on Trade #1. Read F&T chapter 11.
Nov. 10 – International Agreements on Trade #2. Review F&T chapter 11.
Nov. 12 – Globalization and Its Discontents part 1. Read Stiglitz chap. 1-3.
Nov. 17 – Globalization and Its Discontents part 2. Read Stiglitz chap. 4-6.
Nov. 19 – Globalization and Its Discontents part 3. Read Stiglitz chap. 7-9.
Nov. 24 – In Defense of Globalization part 1. Read Bhagwati chap. 1-7.
Nov. 26 – THANKSGIVING – NO CLASS
Dec. 1 – In Defense of Globalization part 2. Read Bhagwati chap. 8-12.
Dec. 3 – In Defense of Globalization part 3. Read Bhagwati chap. 13-16.
Dec. 13 – FINAL EXAM AT 9:00 AM.
Course Policies – ECON 503 Fall 2008
Class Attendance – Enrollment for this class is about 50 students. You are all more or
less adults. Therefore, I will not take attendance nor incorporate it into your grade.
However, I do expect that you will come to class, if for no other reason than to find out
what, out of the considerable material that we will cover this semester, I will put on the
test. Also, important announcements will often be made in class. Hence, do not miss
class for frivolous reasons, and if you absolutely have to be absent, please ask a fellow
classmate about any material that you missed. I will practice cold-calling, so please stay
awake and focused.
Cell Phones – I consider improper cell phone etiquette to be one of the banes of modern
existence. Should your phone make more than two audible rings during class, you may
do one of two things with it: 1) Allow me to answer it, or 2) Answer it yourself and
proceed to summarize what we discussed in class before hanging up. You may find it
less embarrassing to simply remember to turn off your phone before class.
Grading Policy – Each of the two exams and your final homework grade will be curved,
should the grade distribution be lower than a standard distribution. I will not drop any of
your grades. Therefore, a low score on a difficult assignment that you tried to do will be
better for your grade than a zero on an assignment that you did not try to do.
At the end of the semester, I will average your curved grades with 25% weight going to
your homework grade, 30% to your midterm, 30% to your final exam, and 15% to your
term paper; I will then round your numerical grade to the nearest whole percent. People
with grades in the 90s will receive A’s, those with grades in the 80s will receive B’s, and
so on. Within each decade, if you have a 6 or higher, you will receive a +. While I am
willing to look at genuine errors in grading, I will be more annoyed than impressed by
your persistence in claiming that I should give you a B in the class because you really
need or want one. Please make a special note about my rounding policy – I will round to
the nearest whole percent, and no further. Should you have an average of 89.499999%,
your grade will be a B+.
I do not give extra credit assignments. On the other hand, I do give lots of regular credit,
and no one assignment in this class is worth so large a fraction of your grade that a poor
grade on one cannot be made up for with strong performances on other assignments.
I should also mention that I have taught enough courses in economics to expect that some
people will catch on to the material faster than others. As a result, some people will be
able to do well in the course with less apparent effort than others. This is why it is said
that life is unfair. However, I do strongly believe that your final grade will, to some
degree, be correlated with the amount of effort that you put into course. You should
know, though, that I can only give grades based on the results of your homework
assignments and exams, as I cannot directly observe your effort.
Illness / Other Emergencies – Should you be unable to complete a homework
assignment because of an illness or other emergency, please inform me as soon as
possible. While I cannot grant extensions or make-up assignments, I will, on a case-bycase basis, consider dropping certain assignments from your grade, but only if you let me
know about it as soon as possible after the due date. Students who consider a busy social
schedule sufficient reason for not doing their homework will be laughed at.
Should you miss an exam because of illness or emergency, I will require that you show a
doctor’s receipt or other evidence of the emergency and ask you to reschedule your exam
as soon as possible.
If you anticipate missing an exam for a university event or other scheduled function,
please let me know as far in advance as you know about the conflict. I am generally
happy to make arrangements for students to take an exam early, and considerably more
reluctant to allow them to take it late for non-emergency reasons. If you only inform me
of your absence after the fact, you will risk receiving a zero for the exam in question.
Exams – My general advice about studying for exams is that you should do four things,
in decreasing order of importance: 1) Do the old exams or practice exams that I will post
online a week or so before the exams, so you can both review and get a feeling for the
types of questions that I will ask. 2) (Re)Do the practice problem sets in Aplia. The best
way to learn the material is by doing problems. I will give you instructions about
clearing old answers as the exam approaches. 3) Review your class notes. Obviously,
the stuff that I talk about in class the most is the stuff that I think is the most important.
4) If all else fails, re-read the textbook. I don’t recommend using this as your primary
study method, but if you’re struggling with something in particular and your notes don’t
make any sense, it’s a good fall-back resource. (This is distinct from reading your
textbook for the first time – you’ll understand the material in class better if you’ve seen it
before, even in a superficial manner.)
You are allowed to use calculators on exams. However, I will not provide any.
Office Hours – Virtually all students will struggle with at least some of the material.
Therefore, I will have office hours on Mondays through Wednesdays from 3:30-5:00 in
the afternoon in office BA 413 unless I announce otherwise. Should you need to see me
outside these hours, please schedule an appointment via email. Please make use of this
resource.
Getting Started With Aplia – ECON 503, Fall 2008
Buying a Textbook and Aplia Access – As I mentioned in previous email messages, the
easiest way to get Aplia access is to buy a new copy of the Feenstra textbook that comes
labeled as having an Aplia access card inside. If the bookstore is not carrying these,
please feel free to point out that Prof. Hauk wrote in big bold letters on the book request
form that they needed to carry the Aplia edition of the textbook. If you have one of these
books, good – skip ahead to the next paragraph.
If you don’t yet have a textbook with an Aplia access card inside, then you have a few
options to consider. One is, of course, buying the new textbook with the Aplia access
card. You can also buy access to Aplia without a card for $70. If you do, you will get a
full online version of the textbook; so, if you don’t mind reading long passages of text
online, you may find this path the easiest and cheapest way to go. Alternatively, you
could try to find a cheap used copy of the Feenstra textbook. Whatever your choices,
you must buy access to Aplia for this course. If you are uncertain about whether or not
you will drop this course, you can still register for Aplia and defer payment until
September 10th, which is well after the normal add/drop period. If you have not paid by
the 10th, you will lose your access to the website.
Registering for Aplia – There are detailed instructions for registering at the end of the
syllabus. Please go check it for details. If you go to the website, it should be pretty
straightforward what you need to do in order to register. The registration key for this
course is Z42T-T9J2-ZKZW. Please register with the email address that you use the
most frequently, as I will use this address to send messages to the class for the rest of the
semester.
Using Aplia – Now that you’re registered, go to the course homepage and click on the
tab in the upper-right hand of the screen that says “Assignments,” and your assignments
for the first three weeks of class will appear on screen. Those of you who have used
Aplia in the past may notice that the setup is a little different for this class. Aplia has
three basic types of assignments – readings, practice assignments, and graded
assignments. Readings are chapters from the textbook (and potentially other sources)
that are assigned for the day of the class when we will be discussing them. If you have a
paper copy of the textbook, then you can read the paper copy and ignore these and just
use Aplia as a reminder for when we’ll be discussing those readings.
Practice problem sets are problems sets that, as the name suggests, are simply there for
your own practice. While they have “due dates,” you can do them whenever you like and
do as much or as little of them as you find helpful. They can be quite helpful in that you
get feedback on your answers right away. We will not have many practice problem sets
for this class. Primarily this is because the way that the graded problem sets are set up is
a little bit different than what you may be used to.
Graded problem sets will, in general, be due on Tuesday evenings at 11:45 PM and will
cover the chapter(s) that we went over in class during the previous week. A new feature
that has recently been added to the package is called the “Grade it Now” feature. After
answering a problem, you now have two options. The first option is to save your answer
and continue. This option is similar to what you may have done in the past with Aplia. If
you save and continue, you may revisit the problem and change you answer as many
times as you would like before the due date. You are then graded based on the answer in
the system when the problem set is due. The other option is to “Grade it Now”. Should
you select this option, you will receive instant feedback on your answers. You will not
be able to change your answers, but you will be asked if you would like to do a similar
version of the problem with different numbers or a slight rewording. You may (but are
not required to) attempt to answer the question three times, with the average of your three
scores counting as your grade for the problem. For example, if you answer a question
worth 5 points, you might choose to grade it now and only receive 1 point for your
answer. You can then try another version and receive, for example, 3 points. On your
third attempt you get all 5 points. Your grade for the problem would then be 3/5.
Aplia: The First Couple Weeks – When you first look at the assignments, you might
notice that there are only readings for the first week and then two for the Tuesday of the
second week. I set it up this way intentionally, because several people are still adding
into the course during this week, and they might have needed a couple extra days.
However, you who are already enrolled in the course can start now. In fact, I highly
recommend that you get going on the Aplia assignments that you can do now. If you
wait until next weekend, you will have a tough time finishing them all.
So, where should you start? Besides doing the readings I’d start with the “Introduction to
Using Aplia Problem Sets”. This assignment (note that it’s graded!) will explain in more
depth how to answer questions and how the Grade it Now feature works. After that, I’d
do the “Math and Graphs Tutorial”, which is a practice problem set that will help you
brush up on these skills.
After you have finished these assignments, you can begin work on the first substantive
problem set, “Trade in the Global Economy.” You should be able to complete these
questions after the first day of class.
If you have any further questions, please email or call me.