Registration is now open for Spring 2022, and the department is offering four unique sections of ECON 492 for senior Economics majors. Three sections will be offered on campus for in-residence students, and one section is reserved for students in our CSU Online degree program.

To register for ECON 492, a student must have senior status and have completed ECON 304, 306 and 335 (or concurrent registration). Registration questions should be directed to your Academic Success Coordinator or to the Economics office in Clark C 306.

CAMPUS COURSES

ECON 492, “Managing the Global Water Crisis: An Economic Perspective” (Section 2, CRN 12604)

  • Professor Edward Barbier
  • TR 9:30-10:45 A.M.

This course focuses on a key paradox of water resource management: Despite mounting evidence of growing over-use and scarcity of water, why is the world not mobilizing it vast wealth, ingenuity and institutions to avert this crisis?  Or, from an economic perspective, if water is valuable and scarce, why is it so poorly managed? To explore this paradox, the course focuses on the role of water in economic development, covering both local, national and global aspects of this relationship, and especially focusing on the role of institutions, governance and incentives in water resource management. It is designed as a senior seminar course and aims to give students a sense of current theories, debates, historical perspectives and methodologies concerning water and economic development, while also allowing students to develop and utilize their skills in economics to analyze a relevant water-related topic of their choice.  The course is divided between lectures and readings, and a group project.  Students will work together in groups to survey and analyze various central considerations in the economics of managing the global water crisis.  The course will culminate in a poster session in which students share with each other the findings of their research.

ECON 492, “The Economics of Climate Change” (Section 3, CRN 11872)

  • Professor Terry Iverson
  • TR 11:00 A.M. -12:15 P.M.

However you look at it, the prospect of human-caused climate change presents an enormous policy challenge that has been the subject of intense international debate for almost 30 years.  While uncertainty persists regarding many features of the problem, the possibility of dire consequences cannot be ruled out.  Meanwhile, despite numerous efforts to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases, global emissions continue to increase at a rate of several percent per year.  The field of economics provides powerful conceptual and empirical tools for understanding the key policy obstacles and for devising a response that addresses these obstacles in a realistic way.  In this class, students will work together in groups to survey and analyze various central considerations in the economics of climate change.  The course will culminate in a poster-sharing session in which students share with each other the findings of their research.

ECON 492, “Comparative Economic Systems” (Section 4, CRN 13887)

  • Associate Professor Anders Fremstad
  • TR 2:00-3:15 P.M.

Economic systems vary enormously across time and place. This course provides students with a historical overview of how humans have organized economies from hunter-gatherers to digital nomads. We will focus on distinguishing between feudal, capitalist, and socialist economic institutions. Using micro- and macroeconomic theory, we will analyze how these economic systems operate and why they succeed or fail. The course will culminate in a class project in which we compare the economic institutions and economic outcomes of existing economic systems. We will work together to collect data to compare countries’ economies along important dimensions. Students will write a final paper that compares another country’s economy to that of the United States.

ONLINE COURSE

ECON 492, “Global Poverty, Intervention, and Evaluation” (Section 801, CRN 202210)

  • Assistant Professor Niroj Bhattarai
  • Online course (not to be confused with remote instruction)

This senior seminar challenges students to evaluate issues around poverty in the developing world. After reviewing the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), students are asked to evaluate the progress made by a country of their choice towards select SDGs. The central activity of the seminar is the completion by each seminar participant of a written proposal of an intervention plan to address an issue related to global poverty. To help motivate the intervention and complete the project, students (through multiple submissions) will:

  • evaluate, summarize, and analyze economic data
  • review professional economic research publications
  • create a detailed report on the intervention plan
  • provide a methodological framework to evaluate the effects of the intervention, and
  • create an oral presentation of the plan

This fast-paced online course is challenging and time intensive. Good results require significant amounts of intense effort and self- discipline.

Registration questions for any section of ECON 492 should be directed to your Academic Success Coordinator or to the Economics office in Clark C 306.