Are there some things money shouldn’t be able to buy? How should permissions to emit carbon emissions be distributed? Is torture always prohibited? This course will examine some central issues in normative and applied ethics. You will learn to isolate the important claims within readings, understand the structure of arguments, test views for strengths and weaknesses, offer relevant support for and critical responses to your ethical views.
In Business Ethics, we will see how we can make a start on answering the questions that arise in business contexts using insights from moral philosophy. We start by clarifying the uses and limitations of moral theorising in business situations before moving on to consider particular ethical issues, including: what should the relationship between business and employee be? Do companies have special duties to improve climate change? Is off-shoring morally permissible? What, if anything, is wrong with tax avoidance?
What is justice? We will consider this question using the work of the most influential political philosopher of the 20th century: John Rawls. We start by seeing how Rawls develops his conception of justice as fairness before examining critical reactions to that idea. During the module we will examine many issues of political interest: what sort of reasons is it appropriate to offer in a political argument? What does liberalism require from us? Can liberalism make adequate space for the rights of disadvantaged groups?
This modules involves students carrying out independent research, throughout the autumn and spring term of their final year, on a topic chosen in consultation with their supervisor, to produce a piece of work of up to 10,000 words. The dissertation will demonstrate your ability to select an interesting, but manageable philosophical topic for discussion, find out about existing views on this topic in the literature, put forward a sustained, structured argument for your own view, and defend it against counter-arguments.
The idea of the dissertation option is to provide a structured opportunity for independent learning. It is a particularly useful choice for students thinking of going on to graduate work, but it is also relevant for career destinations requiring skills in gathering and synthesising material – in effect, the vast majority of career destinations of politics and international studies graduates.
What are the dynamics that are driving East Asia’s contemporary transformation? This module we address this question from an interdisciplinary political economy perspective. In term 1 we place the evolution of the region and its key actors in historical context, and explore the fundamental social, economic, and political concepts necessary for making sense of the region. On the basis of this foundation, in term 2 we then delve into a number of contemporary issues facing East Asian countries, and which determine their role and position within the global political economy. These allow us both to understand the region on its own terms, and compare it to the ‘advanced’ political economies of North America and Europe.
This module is taught over two terms and is a follow-on for those students who took the B stream of EC120 in Year 1. It is designed to give you a toolkit of techniques so that you are able to understand empirical economic papers and be able to critically evaluate the results. There is a focus on understanding the application of techniques, so that you will be able to undertake your own empirical research work and understand the limitation and pitfalls in that work.
The module aims to enable students to develop a deeper understanding of economic concepts introduced in first–year analysis and to introduce new concepts in both micro and macroeconomic analysis. New concepts include material drawn from general equilibrium, welfare economics, game theory, rational expectations and time consistency. The module aims to introduce students to the analysis of public policy issues such as market failure and counter-inflation policy. By the end of the module, the student will be expected to be familiar with a range of tools for the analysis of both micro and macroeconomic problems. The student will have a rigorous knowledge of the theoretical models which underlie economic analysis and an understanding of both the applicability and the limitations of particular models and approaches.
Why do some countries have higher economic growth than others? How might winning the lottery affect how much someone might choose to work? Must an increase in the minimum wage rate lead to unemployment? These are examples of the sorts of questions which this module will enable you to analyse. The module will use some maths (including differential calculus) and effective use of diagrams.
Economics of Money and Banking will enable you to have a detailed discussion of the key issues in the theory and practice of financial markets, banking, monetary policy and, importantly, to understand their interaction and to embed strong practical and policy-related economics skills. By the end of the module, you will have debated and critically assessed the main elements of the financial system and the roles played by different financial assets in this system, the main goals of monetary policy and national institutions and current monetary issues. You will also develop your ability to analyse complex issues using data as a guide including the interpretation of data in the context of the theoretical models.
Can microcredit schemes increase the incomes of the poor? Will legalising drugs reduce usage? Does hospital make people healthier? Will reducing inequality increase or decrease growth rates? The module introduces statistical concepts and methods, widely used in economics, that can be used to answer such questions. The analysis of economic data necessarily proceeds in an environment where there is uncertainty about the processes that generated the data. Statistical methods provide a framework for understanding and characterising this uncertainty. These concepts are most conveniently introduced through the analysis of single variable problems. However, economists are most often concerned about relationships among variables. This module builds towards the study of regression analysis which is often applied by economists in studying such relationships.
“What is the morally right thing to do?” This is an important question in our personal lives and beyond. The Ethics module addresses some theoretical issues that arise when we try to answer this question, such as the following. Are there right and wrong answers to this question? Can we discover moral truth just as we can discover scientific truths, or are our moral convictions more like our tastes? We will also be asking on what basis we might make moral judgments. For example, is it more important that an action has the best consequences or that it respects people’s rights? Is there a conflict?
Each one of us experiences the world in different ways; experiences that are shaped by our gender and the ways that these gendered experiences intersect with our race, class, culture, faith and sexuality. It is from this perspective that Gender and Development takes as its theoretical point of departure. In this module, we explore and seek to explain the deeply gendered processes faced by both women and men living in some of the world’s poorest countries. We will consider why women make up the majority of the global poor, and interrogate the structures, processes and cultures that mean women own just one per cent of the world’s land and earn only a tenth of the world’s income. In exploring the issues affecting billions of women living in the global South, we examine the mechanisms that have been introduced to address these inequalities and assess their effectiveness. Upon completing the module, you should have a greater understanding of gender relations in the developing world, and the different experiences encountered by different groups of both men and women.
This module, which runs over two terms, will introduce you to the thought of some of the key figures in 17th and 18th century philosophy: John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume and Immanuel Kant. All four philosophers are interested in the relation between mind and world. Key questions include: is reality independent of our awareness of it? How is it possible for us to know about the world? Do all our ideas and knowledge come from experience? Are there particular concepts or ideas which we have to use when thinking about the world around us? This is a foundational module which will prepare you for many other modules in philosophy.
The module aims to help students understand and engage critically with some of the central debates on freedom in modern philosophy, in the areas of political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of mind and metaphysics. It will involve a study of a selection of key texts. The module also aims to foster an understanding of the interrelations between problems relating to freedom as they are considered in these areas of philosophy and across different historical periods.
How do firms price strategically? Specifically, how do they take advantage of the fact that consumers engage in limited search, that consumers can be placed in groups who are charged different prices, or can be encouraged to self-select into different tariff types? What is the role of advertising? Why are good sometimes bundled together instead of/ as well as being sold individually? Why do firms sometimes place constraints on those who sell their product, rather than bargaining at arms’ length? These are the sorts of topics we will cover using a mixture of formal modelling, intuition, empirical work and policy analysis. We will not in general imply such practices are either good or bad, simply seek to examine their effects.
In this module, we will discuss world trade and its phenomenal growth in recent decades. We will talk about international supply chains that are behind popular products such as the iPhone. We will work through the principal models of trade theory and see how we can use them to address policy issues associated with globalisation such as rising inequality. The module also covers the economic rationale behind labour migration and foreign direct investment by multinational corporations. We will critically analyse the economic effects of tariffs, antidumping duties and import quotas, and combine the discussion with case studies such as the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union. Finally, we will try to understand why countries join international trade agreements and how the World Trade Organisation (WTO) settles international trade disputes.
The module introduces thinkers, ideas and arguments from ancient philosophy that have been foundational for the western philosophical tradition. Thinkers studied include Parmenides, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Students are introduced both to the primary texts and to secondary literature. The module focuses specifically on metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, and emphasizes contrast and continuity between treatments of these topics in the ancient literature. The module provides a foundation both for further study of Greek philosophy, and for study of contemporary philosophical literature that engages with these traditional themes.
What is philosophy? This module, team-taught by a number of academic staff, will give you a wide-ranging introduction to some of the most important issues and works in philosophy. In the first two terms, you will be reading classic texts by Plato, Hobbes, Mill, Descartes, Locke, and Nietzsche, among others, on topics in moral and political philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, and aesthetics. In term 3, you will study logic and come to understand what distinguishes correct from incorrect inferences in reasoning.
What is politics? This module provides a broad and general overview of the core themes and issues involved in the study of politics from Ancient Greece to the present day. Topics include the scope and study of politics, the nature of power, the role of political institutions (such as assemblies and parties), political ideologies (including Liberalism and Marxism), and the changing form of political activity in the face of new global challenges.
Is it morally permissible for parents to send their children to private schools if they can afford to do so? Do states have the more right to restrict immigration? Is it unjust to rear and kill animals for food? Who should bear the costs of coping with climate change? This module introduces you to various theories of justice that will enable you to address questions such as these and critically assess the conventional wisdom in relation to them.
This module will develop the metatheory of propositional and first-order logic. The primary goal is to show that a proof system similar to that of Logic I is sound (i.e. proves only logically true sentences) and complete (proves all logically true sentences). In order to better understand how we prove things about (as opposed to within) a proof system, we will first study elementary set theory and inductive definitions. We will then consider Tarski's definitions of satisfaction and truth in a model and proceed to develop the Henkin completeness proof for first-order logic. Other topics covered along the way will include Russell's Paradox, countable versus uncountable sets, the compactness theorem and the expressive limitations of first-order logic.
How should human beings best be governed? What does the answer depend upon: analysis of human nature, understanding ‘institutions’ like the economy, having knowledge of ‘the lessons of history’, the teachings of religion…? The thinkers we study in this module lived between the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries, and they had very different answers to the big question – how should humans best be governed – and to the subsidiary questions – for example, what is human nature? We engage critically with their theories and interpretations of their theories offered by others. We discover that interpretations of a classic text can differ markedly, so we try to understand why and to develop our own view of the original texts – to inform our own answer to that question: how should human beings best be governed?
Why do so many people in the world remain in poverty? Is poverty reduction the same thing as development? And might the actions of businesses and governments in richer countries be part of the problem as much as the solution? These are some of the key questions we will address on this module and which will point us towards the politics of international development. In Term 1 we look at theories of development and in Term 2 key actors (like the World Bank) and issues (like healthcare).
The course will look at two highly influential figures in nineteenth-century Post-Kantian philosophy, whose work has had a significant impact on modern social and political thought especially: Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel (1770-1831) and Karl Marx (1818-1883). The module aims to provide an in-depth examination of and critical engagement with one of the most controversial works in the history of social and political philosophy, Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right, and to show how this work provides the basis for the young Marx's critique of the modern state. Particular attention will be paid to the various types of freedom that Hegel introduces, and to his attempt to situate personality and moral subjectivity within a modern form of ethical life (Sittlichkeit) so as to reconcile modern individualism with a human being’s social nature. Other issues to be discussed include Hegel’s revolutionary conceptual distinction between civil society and the political state, which plays a key role in Marx's theory of the modern state as an alienated form of life.
PPE Students are eligible to apply to write an interdisciplinary PPE dissertation which spans more than one department. The PPE dissertation (PO386) offers a structured opportunity for independent learning on a topic of interdisciplinary relevance. Like the Principles of Political Economy core module (PH331), it aims to encourage students to bridge the PPE disciplines. It is a particularly useful choice for students thinking of going on to graduate work, but it is also relevant for career destinations requiring skills in gathering and synthesising material.
This interdisciplinary module focuses on ethical issues that arise at the intersection of economics and philosophy. We’ll be studying four different topics, where each is addressed from both an economic and a philosophical perspective. We’ll start with a discussion of the relation between rationality and morality. Is moral behaviour irrational? Or is there a conception of rationality that incorporates morality? The next topic is economic inequality and distributive justice. We also discuss what ethical constraints, if any, should govern markets and whether the aim of economic policy should be to maximize welfare.
The use of rational choice approaches developed in economics have been applied to the study of politics, although some political scientists have been critical of them. Within political science there has been a focus on the role of institutions, although insights are also available from a rational choice approach. The course seeks to critically examine the contribution of rational choice to issues that arise at the interface between economics and politics.
This module focuses on central debates and theories in international, intergenerational and environmental justice. Topics addressed include global poverty and global justice; theories of intergenerational justice; and science, ethics and impacts of climate change.
This is a module made up of 3 component modules Mathematical Techniques (A or B), Statistical Techniques (A or B) and Computer and Data Analysis. The module is designed to give you the mathematical and statistical background which is routinely used for both theoretical and applied economic analysis. In term 1, the Mathematical Techniques modules are taught and you will study both algebra and calculus (including constrained and unconstrained optimisation). In Statistical Techniques in term 2, you will study probability, distributions of one or more random variables, and hypothesis testing. The Computer and Data Analysis module is designed to provide student research skills in understanding economic data and how to use a statistical package to analyse data.
This module gives you the opportunity to deepen and consolidate previous knowledge by applying the basic ideas of economics to the study of a particular question that interests them. In answering their research question students will be expected to use a combination of economics techniques and statistical tools. The project will often be of a statistical nature but for students whose interest lies elsewhere, for example economic history, you will be guided in techniques that can be used to answer their question. You are expected to attend methodological lectures and student led seminars to improve their research techniques. You will be supervised by a member of academic staff who will support student research towards an independent project.
How can we identify and understand the challenges facing the international political economy today? States and Markets is a team-taught module that applies the insights of classic theorists of political economy - including Smith, Marx, List, Polanyi, Keynes and Hayek - to develop understanding of crucially important issues in the contemporary international political economy that continue to affect our everyday lives, including trade, production, financial crisis, tax havens, and alternatives models of and potential alternatives to capitalism.
How did the world economy get to where it is today? How did the divergence between rich and poor nations develop? In this module, the long term changes in world income and population are quantified, the forces which explain the success of rich countries are identified and the obstacles which hindered economics advance in lagging regions are explored. The interaction between rich countries and the rest is scrutinised to assess the degree to which backwardness may have been due to Western policy. By the end of this module, you will have acquired a broad understanding of the evolution of the world economy during the last millennium and specialist knowledge of those parts you find particularly interesting from growth theory, the theory of international trade and money, and business cycle theory.
This module provides an introduction to the study of World Politics / International Relations. It examines the historical underpinnings of the system of states, the contemporary structure of international relations, key actors within that structure, key issues of concern, and theories of international relations. It provides a solid grounding for further study in politics, international relations, and political economy in the 2nd and 3rd years. The reading material is mainly drawn from the literature on Politics / International Relations, but students are encouraged to read widely from cognate disciplines: History, Geography, Sociology, Philosophy and Economics.
