International Economics - A Comprehensive Economics Course

Explore the tension between free trade and protectionism, define free trade, and examine tariffs, subsidies, and quotas as tools governments use to shield domestic producers, with welfare implications.

Examine the arguments for protectionism, from shielding domestic employment and infant industries to preventing dumping and safeguarding product standards, while considering revenue and balance-of-payments motives.

Examine why protectionism raises import prices for consumers and reduces choices, diminishes competition, and distorts comparative advantage, risking slower growth and limited foreign currency access.

Explore how a protective subsidy shifts the domestic corn supply outward to protect U.S. producers, reallocating revenue between domestic and world producers.

Identify administrative barriers such as red tape, health and safety standards, environmental standards, and embargoes that restrict imports to protect domestic producers.

Examine fixed exchange rate systems that peg currencies to another currency or gold, and how governments maintain the peg, including revaluation and devaluation, with stability, foreign investment, and deflationary risks.

Explore how a weak exchange rate boosts exports, tourism, and domestic employment while raising import costs and inflation. Understand the balance between exporters' gains and higher import costs.

Exchange rates connect the world by showing how currency values shape domestic prices, exports, and imports across fixed, floating, and managed regimes.

Explore the balance of payments as a country's checkbook, tracking inflows and outflows, including the current and financial accounts, to see how deficits are balanced by reserves.

Tracks the net changes in foreign ownership of domestic financial assets within the financial account, including direct investment, portfolio investment, and the capital account, with inflows and outflows.

Identify the reserve assets account as the central bank's savings buffer of gold and foreign currencies used to balance the balance of payments.

Explore the balance of payments with a flow of the current and financial accounts, covering current transfers, the capital account, and direct and portfolio investment to show how euros move.

Explore how free trade, tariffs, subsidies, quotas, and exchange rates shape international economics and the balance of payments across six stages of economic integration.