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.

Learn to build the free trade diagram from the basic microeconomic diagram, compare domestic versus world supply and price, and explore effects of tariffs, subsidies, and quotas.

Explore the protective tariff diagram, contrasting with free trade, showing how tariffs raise domestic prices, protect producers, shift revenue to government, and create welfare losses.

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

Explore how a protectionist quota shapes the US corn market by creating a quota diagram with revenue boxes, shifting welfare between domestic and world producers and highlighting welfare losses.

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

Explore how exchange rates express the value of one currency in terms of another, and compare fixed, floating, and in-between regimes within the global foreign exchange market.

Treat currencies as goods and analyze the exchange rate diagram to see how the market for dollars and euros uses supply and demand to set prices.

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 the floating exchange rate system, driven by demand and supply with no government intervention, where appreciation and depreciation arise; assess advantages like flexible interest rates and current account adjustment.

Explore how demand for dollars under a floating exchange rate drives currency values, with inflation differentials, rising income, investment prospects in the United States, higher interest rates, and speculation.

An increase in the dollar supply on the international market depresses the dollar against the euro. Reasons include travel, buying euros, investment, saving, inflation differences.

Governments manage floating exchange rates with central bank intervention to balance exports, imports, balance of payments, and foreign investment, keeping rates within practical limits.

Explore how a strong exchange rate (more pesos per dollar) lowers inflation and imports costs, boosts efficiency, but hurts exporters and domestic producers from rising import competition.

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.

Visualize the balance of payments by linking the current and financial accounts, debits and credits, and the official reserves account, with direct and portfolio investments and capital transfers.

The current account, left side of the balance of payments, tracks net inflows from the balance of trade in goods and services, income, and current transfers.

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.

Link the balance of payments to the exchange rate by examining deficits and surpluses under fixed and floating regimes, and how currency demand or supply affects the peso.

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.

Trace the balance of payments journey and the politics of why countries trade, leading to economic integration with a common currency and central bank, as in the European Union.

Trace economic integration from bilateral and multilateral trade agreements through six stages to full integration. The European Union serves as an example of common currency and fiscal and monetary policies.

Explore the six stages of economic integration, from preferential trade areas to complete economic integration, covering free trade areas, customs unions, common markets, and economic and monetary union.

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

Explore the key concepts of international economics, from free trade and protectionism to tariffs, subsidies, exchange rates, and balance of payments, including current and financial accounts and reserve assets.