Re: course readings

[Jurriaan Bendien <bendien@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It's a bit difficult to give suggestions if one doesn't know what themes you
are covering. Paul Hirst & Grahame Thompson, Globalisation in Question (2nd
edition) provides good clear discussion of empirical magnitudes in the
international movement of capital, goods and services. There are also some
good UN publications on this, relating to particular aspects, for example
TNCs or world inequality (Report on Human Development). Ankie Hoogveldt's
books also give quite good overviews of development issues. Anwar Shaikh
provides good clear discussions of what is really wrong with the Ricardian
theory of foreign trade, which continues to inspire Leftwing and Rightwing
economists (see his website). Another good article is by John Weeks, The
Expansion of Capital and Uneven development on a World Scale, Capital and
Class, 74, Summer 2001. There is also a good useful chapter on foreign trade
in Robert Went's book on globalisation. A good introduction to the theory of
imperialism, is a chapter in Ernest Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory, Vol 2.
That's my bias anyway... Most economists in my experience are rather
clueless about the concepts and methods of accounting for foreign trade and
what they really mean (although not a trained economist myself, I not
infrequently found that trained economists couldn't even grasp what GDP was,
never mind valuations of foreign trade), so it's useful to have something on
this as well. Apart from that, there is a big literature on indebtedness,
for example by Susan George, and on Foreign Aid, by Teresa Hayes. Currently
I am reading "Thinking the Unthinkable: the immigration myth exposed" by
Nigel Harris, which is about the political economy of emigration and
immigration. Generally emigration is not covered in international economics,
it is supposed to be more a political science issue of sociological issue,
but the economic implications are enormous. There are around 175 million
immigrants in the world, as mentioned in a Granma article I posted (i.e.
people migrating to another country and settling there), and we are not even
talking refugees here.

Hope this helps,

J.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ellen Frank" <frank@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2003 8:02 PM
Subject: [PEN-L] course readings


>         I am once again preparing to teach a one-semester international
> economics course and would welcome reading ideas or syllabae from
> others.  Prereqs are intro courses only, so the readings can't be too
> high-level.  Thanks.
> Ellen Frank
>
>