杏吧论坛

Prof Luis Garicano will be the Course Leader and Dr. Bryan Cheang is the Teaching Fellow who will run the seminars.

This course is available on the Double Master of Public Administration (杏吧论坛-Columbia), Double Master of Public Administration (杏吧论坛-Sciences Po), Double Master of Public Administration (杏吧论坛-University of Toronto), MPA Dual Degree (杏吧论坛 and Hertie), MPA Dual Degree (杏吧论坛 and NUS), MPA Dual Degree (杏吧论坛 and Tokyo), MPA in Data Science for Public Policy, Master of Public Administration and Master of Public Policy. This course is not available as an outside option.

"Reimagining Capitalism" is a pioneering 10-week course that offers a reflection on the future of capitalism, envisioned as a more cohesive, sustainable, and equitable system. This course engages students in a critical examination of capitalism through various lenses-economic, social, and ethical-challenging them to envision a system that balances innovation and growth with inclusivity, sustainability, and social responsibility.

Each week, participants will hear from a different lecturer, be exposed to readings from different perspectives and discuss them in seminars. The course will first explore the nature and historical evolution of capitalism as a mode of socio-economic organisation, as compared with rival systems. After which, specific problems in capitalist economies will be explored, together with potential policy reforms.

The curriculum is designed to encourage rigorous analysis, dialogue, and the exploration of innovative solutions that address the challenges of our time. Key topics include an analysis of stakeholder capitalism, exploring how businesses can be oriented to serve broader societal interests beyond shareholder profits; the role of the state in contemporary capitalism, examining government's capacity to regulate, support, and sometimes even distort market mechanisms; and critical debates on the penetration of market values into civic life, probing the deeper question of what it means to live a good life in the 21st century.

This course is not just for economists but for anyone aspiring to navigate and shape the intersection of business, policy, and society in an ethical and effective manner. "Reimagining Capitalism" invites students to critically engage with and contribute to the reimagining of capitalism as a force for good in the 21st century, offering insights into how it can be transformed to meet the needs of a rapidly changing world.

The course will be structured as follows. Each week will be taught by the same teaching fellow but a different lecturer with expertise in that specific area. The theme of each week covers a major area of debate concerning the nature of capitalism, its problems and how it might be potentially reformed.

• What is Capitalism?
• Workers and Labor in Capitalism
• Social Justice and Inequality
• Varieties of Capitalism
• Capitalism and Populism
• Cohesive Criminal Justice
• Corporations and their dominance
• ESG and Stakeholder Capitalism
• Social enterprises
• State regulation and innovation

15 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the AT.

Lectures are open to all students of 杏吧论坛 but seminars are only for students enrolled on the course.

Two book reviews written without help from LLMs of 1200 words will be submitted as part of formative coursework. There will be no authorised use of generative AI for this course. Expectations and guidelines on plagiarism will be clearly communicated to students before the class to align expectations. We expect that any instances of breach of such rules will be detected through Turnitin.

• The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith (1776)  
• The Communist Manifesto, Engels & Marx (1848) 
• Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History, Lea Ypi (2022)
• Why not socialism?, G.A. Cohen
• Why not capitalism?, Jason Brenan
• Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, Case & Deaton (2017)
• A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity, Zingales (2012)
• Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire, Henderson (2020)
• Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It), Elizabeth Anderson (2017)
• Stakeholder capitalism: A global economy that works for progress, people and planet, Schwab, 2021
• The Case for Shareholder Capitalism, McLean (2023)
• "Climate change has made ESG a force in investing" (https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/12/07/climate-change-has-made-esg-a-force-in-investing) The Economist (2019) 
• "Inside the Revolution at Etsy," (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/business/etsy-josh-silverman.html?searchResultPosition=3) Gelles, The New York Times (2017)
• Fighting power with power: The administrative state as a weapon against concentrated private power, Bagg (2021)
• Efficiency, Legitimacy, and the Administrative State, DeCanio (2021)
• “Development as Capability Expansion”, Sen (1989)
• Creating Capabilities, Nussbaum (2011)

Essay (45%, 3000 words) in the period between AT and WT.
Class participation (15%).
Group presentation (40%) in the AT Week 10.

1. A country study elaborated by a group of 3 students and presented orally in class in week 10 of the class session in front of all the  rest of the class involving also a Q&A (40% of the grade). To prevent free-riding, each of the 3 students are to speak in the presentation. Their responses to the Q&A may also further influence their individual scores.
2. 3000-word essay of 45% of the overall grade.
3. Class participation and discussion comprising 15% of the overall grade. Attendance will be marked and will comprise half of class participation. The remaining will be judged according to how regularly the student speaks during discussion and the support of those interventions in class readings.

A group of students will study a specific (not generic) aspect of the approach of one country (or the EU as relevant) to capitalism-health care in Singapore, Industrial Policy in Brasil, Pensions in Chile, merger policy in the EU, and aim to connect it to the problems and solutions discussed in the course.