Fall 2023
Section A1
Lectures: TTh 12:30pm to 1:45pm
Location: CAS 326
Section B1
Lectures: TTh 9:30am to 10:45am
Location: CAS B36
Professor James Feigenbaum
Department of Economics
270 Bay State Road, Room 302
jamesf@bu.edu
The course will examine a selection of the major themes in the economic development of the United States (with briefer coverage of the rest of the world for certain topics). There is no textbook; instead, we will read research papers written by economists and other scholars relevant to each topic. We begin with an overview of some of the empirical methods commonly used in modern economics and their application in economic history, as well as a discussion of new sources of historical data, the lifeblood of economic history. Then, we will study themes including institutions and the long run development of the US; slavery and emancipation; immigration and migration; the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the economics of WWII; human capital (including education, health, and crime); technology adoption; and inequality and intergenerational mobility (including race and gender gaps).
This course is intended for economics majors. It is helpful if students have a good understanding of microeconomics at the intermediate level and some exposure to economic statistics. However, all necessary economic tools (theories, econometrics, etc) will be covered in lecture.
My office hours are Wednesdays from 11am to 12:30pm and Thursdays from 11am to 12:30pm, all by appointment. Please make an appointment at https://calendly.com/feigenbaum. I require you to schedule appointments during office hours for two reasons. First, you don’t want to waste your time waiting for your classmates to finish their appointments. Second, we’re trying to reduce crowding in the narrow hallways of the econ building. If you cannot make my listed office hours, send me an email and we will figure out a time to talk.
Office hours are for your benefit. If there is something from lecture or the readings that you did not understand or want to learn more about or piqued your interest, those are all great reasons to make an appointment for office hours.
Our TF is Nhan Ngo, a PhD candidate in the Economics department. He will be holding office hours by appointment. Email him at nhanngo@bu.edu. Nhan is a great resource if you have questions about the lectures or the assignments or anything else relating to economics.
Our peer TAs are Yusu Yuan and Emily Qiu. Both are BU undergraduates who took EC365 last year and they both did very well. They will both be holding office hours. Yusu’s office hours are 5-6pm on Tuesday and Thursday. Emily’s office hours are 4-5pm on Tuesday and Friday. Email Yusu at yusu123@bu.edu and Emily at emilyqiu@bu.edu. Both are great resources if you have questions about the assignments, how to study for our exams, or how to do well in the class.
We will use Blackboard for assignments, readings, etc.
The syllabus is here
There is no textbook for this course. All readings will be available on blackboard.
There is an in-class midterm and a final exam. The final exam is cumulative but will be weighted towards the material after the midterm.
The midterm will be on October 26 in class. The final will be as scheduled by the registrar. For section A1, that is Wednesday December 20 from noon to 2pm. For section B1, that is Tuesday December 19 from 9am to 11am. Put these dates in your calendar ASAP, as there will be no make-up exams without a note from a dean.
In addition, we will have four short research question assignments. Writing a complete original research paper during a semester-long course is very hard (and in economic history, with a premium on collecting new old data, it is nearly impossible). Instead, I want to help you to start thinking about how to come up with possible questions you could ask (and answer) in a full project. Think of this as the very first step you would take before starting original research. Getting familiar with this step will deepen your understanding of the social science research process. These assignments will be maximum one page each (seriously, I will stop reading after one page).
Your course grade weighs the midterm at 30 percent, the final at 35 percent, 20 percent for the short assignments (5 percent each), and 15 for class participation. I will not review any grades before at least 24 hours have passed. Remember that grades can be adjusted down just as easily as they can be adjusted up.
Class participation means two things. First, it means coming to class on time. I use Russian Roulette attendance and call a handful of names at the start of every class. If there are issues with attendance or punctuality, a complete sign-in sheet will be implemented. Second, it means participating by following lecture, taking notes, asking questions when you have them and answering questions when I ask them. This is a large class and I’m not expecting anyone to talk every meeting. But to get the full 15 participation points, I’ll expect you to attend class on time every meeting and speak up multiple times during the semester.
If you need to get an extension on an assignment or have any other concerns, please just ask. I will be incredibly flexible with deadlines if you talk with me ahead of time. I am much less excited about emails asking for extensions five minutes before a deadline.
This will, hopefully, be a more normal semester than the past few years. Still, the pandemic is not over. If you are feeling sick or unwell or anything, please do not feel like you have to come to class and risk your own health and everyone else’s.
If you are going to miss class because you are worried that you are contagious (COVID or anything else), just let us know via this form. The TF and I will be glad to help you catch up on whatever you miss via Zoom.
While I will allow laptops during lecture, you should be aware that recent research shows that students retain information far more effectively when they take notes by hand. Taking notes about graphs and figures and tables on a computer might also be quite difficult. If you choose to use your laptop during class, please try not to live-tweet or live-stream or live-anything, at least not without the class hashtag (hashtag TBD). It should go without saying that cellphone use is absolutely forbidden during lecture. Please silence and put away your phone before class begins. It is really that easy. I promise not to play on my phone during lecture either.
I have a zero-tolerance policy for academic dishonesty. If you submit work that is fully or partially plagiarized—defined as appropriating someone else’s words or ideas without proper attribution—you will receive a failing grade. Please check with me if you are unsure of how to cite material in your written work. You can consult BU’s academic integrity policy here: https://www.bu.edu/academics/policies/academic-conduct-code/
Please note that having ChatGPT write your assignments for you is plagiarism. While any professor claiming to have a working “ChatGPT” detector is lying to you (or misunderstanding how NLP methods work), I find it highly unlikely that an LLM will be able to get more than a C on our research question assignments.
As you can see from the schedule below, each class has four papers listed. I will lecture on all papers (maybe more!) and all four are listed for your reference. But what do you need to know for the exams? Exam focus will be highly correlated with lecture focus; papers I talk a lot about in class are much more likely to be on the exams (and that parts of those papers I talk a lot about are much more likely to be asked about). Generally speaking, that will be the FIRST paper listed for each class. I would recommend reading that paper before lecture (you will understand the lectures much better if you have read the paper first). The other papers will be covered in lecture, and an understanding of the research questions and the results (to the extent that we cover it in class) will suffice for exams.
September 5
September 7
September 12
September 14
September 19
September 21
September 26
September 28
October 3
October 5
October 10
October 12
October 17
October 19
October 24
October 26
October 31
November 2
November 7
November 9
November 14
November 16
November 21
November 23
November 28
November 30
December 5
December 7
December 12