The Wealth of Nations
Fall 2024 (Preliminary)
Course Schedule and Outline
Week 1: Resources and Wealth
Lecture: Investment vs. Productivity Driven Growth
Case Study: Is China’s Growth Driven by Debt?
Readings:
Paul Krugman, “The Myth of Asia’s Miracle,” Foreign Affairs, November/December 1994.
Financial Times, “The Debt Dragon” Also look at the other articles in the FT's series on Chinese debt (http://www.ft.com/intl/indepth/china-debt-dragon)
60 Minutes Video on China's "Ghost Cities": http://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-real- estate-bubble-lesley-stahl-60-minutes/
"How China’s Past Stimulus is Dogging Its Growth Prospects,” Wall Street Journal,
September 16, 2016. For more details, see Bai, Hsieh, and Song, “The Long Shadow of China’s Fiscal Stimulus,” Brookings Papers in Economic Activity, 2016.
Problem Set 1 Available
Week 2: Resource Allocation: Theory, Measurement, and Case Study of Venezuela
Lecture: Implications of Efficient Resource Allocation
Discussion: Resource Misallocation in Venezuela
Readings:
Chang-Tai Hsieh, Edward Miguel, Daniel Ortega, Francisco Rodriguez, “The Price of Political Opposition: Evidence from Venezuela’s Maisanta,” American Economic
Journal: Applied Economics, 2011. (only pages 196-203).
Problem Set 1 Due
Week 3: Resource Misallocation: Case Studies of Informality in Mexico, Contract Labor in India, and Privatization of State-Owned Firms in China
Lecture: Measurement and Implications of Resource Misallocation
Discussion: Case Studies
Readings:
Diana Farrell, “The Hidden Dangers of the Informal Economy,” McKinsey Quarterly 2004.
Hernando de Soto, "The Mystery of Capital"
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2001/03/desoto.htm
Santiago Levy, Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes. Watch video at
http://research.chicagobooth.edu/igm/events/speaker-series/2008-04-17.aspx
McKinsey Global Institute, "A Tale of Two Mexicos: Growth and Prosperity in a Two- Speed Economy (only executive summary and chapter 2)
Problem Set 2 available
Week 4: Rise and Fall of Conglomerates; Platform Technologies
Case Study of the Semiconductor Industry Readings
Watch conversation between Jensen Huang (CEO of NVDIA) and Morris Chang (founder of TSMC): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-x7PdnvCyI&t=4116s
Podcast with Tim Culpan (Bloomberg) on TSMC:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4kGN5W7n8VJtYoEEQl4vDV
Problem Set 2 Due
Week 5: Platform Technologies
Readings
“Foxconn Makes Your iPhone. Now It’s Aiming to Make Electric Cars,” Bloomberg
Podcast with Stacy Rasgon on NVIDIA:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0bQzSv797CmhwK9MPOG7vr
Podcast with Brannine McBee, CoreWeave:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/46msCaWxELAKmp7RHXD8jf
Podcast with Josh Wolfe, LuxCapital:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/47s5Ou1MXPQ4wYKlfEa8o8
Class 6: Industrial Revolution in Services; Why Cities Matter
Industrial Revolution in Services
Cities and Growth
Which Cities Power US Growth? Readings:
“Big Med,” New Yorker, August 13, 2012.
“Big Business is Driving America’s Smaller Cities,” Wall Street Journal, February 5, 2020.
Ed Glaeser, The Triumph of the City. New York: Penguin Press 2011, Chapters 5 and 6.
Chapter 5 in, Enrico Moretti, The Geography of American Jobs, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012.
Suketu Mehta, Maximum City, Vintage Books, 2005, Chapter on "Mumbai"
“Tech Expansion Overwhelms Cities in California’s Silicon Valley,” Wall Street Journal, April 2015.
“How Local Regulations Smother the US Economy,” New York Times, September 6, 2017.
“Urban America: US Cities in the Global Economy,” McKinsey Global Institute. Problem Set 3 Available
Week 7: China’s Solution to Resource Misallocation
Part 1: What is (was?) the Chinese System?
Part 2: Crony Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics Readings:
Eric Li, “A Tale of Two Political Systems.” Watch talk on TED:
(https://www.ted.com/talks/eric_x_li_a_tale_of_two_political_systems?language=en)
John Garnaut, “Is China Becoming a Mafia State.” Watch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa4oVHz32i4
Problem Set 3 Due
Week 8: Where is China Heading?
Readings:
Chinese Corporate Espionage Knocks the Wind out of US Company, Business Week 2012.
Kai-Fu Lee: AI Superpowers: China and the U.S. Watch video starting at 12:20 at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ48rP_Rs4g
Lingling Wei, “Xi Jingping Aims to Rein in Chinese Capitalism, Hew to Mao’s Socialist Vision,” Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2021
Brent Crane, “The China Bull,” The WireChina, October 24, 2021.
Chang-Tai Hsieh, “Two Strong Hands: China’s Vision for the Private Sector,” The WireChina, May 2022.
Week 9: The U.S.-China Trade War; U.S. Industrial Policy