ECN231: Economics of Social Issues

 2011-2012

Where? Lecture: Math LT; Classes: EB4a

Office Hour: Thursday 2-3pm, room CB316, or upon appointment any other day of the week.

A course outline and reading list can be found here.

Lectures:

1 - Introduction

Core reading: Lazear's paper: "Economic Imperialism"

2 - Economics of Smoking (I)

Core reading: Chaloupka, F.J. and Warner K.E. “The Economics of Smoking”

3 - Economics of Smoking (II)

4 - Economics of Smoking (III)

Core readings:

- The paper "Taxes, Cigarette Consumption and Smoking Intensity" can be found here: http://ftp.iza.org/dp1849.pdf

- The paper "The Effect of Taxes and Bans on Passive Smoking" can be found here:

http://cep.lse.ac.uk/seminarpapers/29-06-07-COR.pdf

5 - Economics of Crime (I)

Core reading: R.Freeman, "The Economics of Crime"

Optional reading: Home Office Research Study

6 - Economics of Crime (II)

7 - Economics of Crime (III)

Core reading: S. Levitt, "Understanding why crime fell in the 1990s: four factors that explain the decline and six that do not".

8 - Economics of Happiness (I)

Core reading: Richard Layard, “Happiness. Lessons from a new science”, Penguin, 2005 (copies are avilable in the library, or you can get it here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Happiness-Lessons-Science-Richard-Layard/dp/0141016906)

9 - Economics of Happiness (II)

10 - Economics of Happiness (III)

Core readings:

- David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald, “Well-being over time in Britain and the USA”, 2002

- Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer, “Happiness, Economy and Institution”, 1999



11 - no slides are available for this lecture.





Problem Sets:

1 - Introduction
2 - Smoking (I)

Economist's article "Filtering the evidence"

3 - Smoking (II)

Economist's article "How to sober them up"

4 - Smoking (III)

Guardian's article "Parents warned not to smoke at home"

5 - Crime (I)

Economist's article "Fear Itself"

6 - Crime (II)

Economist's article "The decline of the English burglary"

7 - Crime (III)

Economist's article "Making a killing"

8 - Happiness (I)

Economist's article "Where money seems to talk"

9 - Happiness (II)

10 - Past exam question