Economics and Social Justice

Course goals

Learning objectives
At the end of the course the student is able to:

• critically appraise different theories of justice and learn how they are translated into economic models;
• relate social-economic policies to efficiency, justice and fairness;
• work effectively and professionally in a team;
• independently study literature in the domain of political philosophy and economics;
• debate with economists and other scientific professionals about social-economic issues;
• ability to assess the merits of theories and models in politics, philosophy and economics and to situate them in a wider disciplinary context;
• ability to carry out an independent investigation of a political-philosophical and economic issue highlighted in a recent book and produce a coherent presentation;

Content

This course aims to offer an overview of different theories related to economics and justice in order to analyse issues such as the trade-off between equity and efficiency. How do these theories operationalize equity? How do they deal with the trade-off between equity and efficiency? And how can they be incorporated in economic models? We will focus in particular on Dworkin’s theory of equality of resources and Roemer’s theory of equality of opportunity. Dworkin’s theory makes use of devices such as auctions and hypothetical insurance markets that economists are very familiar with. Roemer has shown that his theory can be formulated in terms that can be tested empirically in different domains (e.g. income, education, health care).

Format
Lectures and working groups. The assignment entails to choose and read a book from the Book list, reading book reviews of your selected book and to give a presentation informing your fellow students what this book is about. The topic of basic income is used for an integrated analysis economics and social justice aspects. Finally, during the course students will be trained and triggered to find their way in the Economics and Social Justice blogosphere.
 
Assessment method
·        Written exam (70% of the final grade);
·        Presentation and discussion of topic project (group assignment, 30% of the final grade), see Book list.

Effort requirement
80% attendance at the lectures and tutorials. 

In case online access is required for this course and you are not in the position to buy the access code, you are advised to contact the course coordinator for an alternative solution. Please note that access codes are not re-usable meaning that codes from second hand books do not work, as well as access codes from books with a different ISBN. Separate or spare codes are usually not available.