PDF《Tu/Th 10-11:45》

1 ECON 455: US ECONOMIC HISTORY, Spring 2012, Dr.

Duggan Tu/Th 10-11:45 Location: Morrison

103 My Office: Rhodes 265S, 358-2628 Email: mduggan@our community.edu Web: http://our communityweb.org/marieduggan/ Office Hours: Monday 2-3, Tu 6-7 pm, Wednesday 12-1 I. Course Description For US economic history this semester, students and professor will apply economic theory to explore deindustrialization and reindustrialization in our community between

1970 and 2010. This course will be hands-on research, and students will interview a person connected to local manufacturing, step inside a manufacturing concern to watch the production process, and create graphs to compare out town's experience with national and international tendencies. How did our town manage to retain a vibrant manufacturing base in a period better known nationally for deindustrialization? Why does town business have such a positive relationship with the community, and will that change as ownership ceases to be local? We will apply to our findings the the concepts of productivity, innovation, and social capital gained from reading Adam Smith, Robert Putnam, and Annalee Saxenian. We will also read a novel by the late John Hackett, who was a PhD economist, a manager of a heavy manufacturing concern, and the epitome of Adam Smith's virtuous businessman with his concern for community. II. Course Outcome The class will put together a narrative about our town's changing industrial structure to donate to the community. Each student will describe the industrial process at one firm from an on-site visit (two pages), contribute by interviewing one person who either worked at or managed a manufacturing concern in our community between

1970 and

2010 (3 pages), and also make and explain two graphs with quantitative data for at least ten years of the period (two pages). Students will answer bi-weekly questions on the readings, and at the end of the semester will apply economic theory in a five-page essay to answer one of the questions listed above. The culmination of the course will be a report that the class will create jointly on our community's industrial evolution between

1970 and

2010 which we will donate to the community, and present publicly in an oral presentation. REQUIRED TEXTS: Robert Forrant, Metal Fatigue: The Rise and Precipitous Decline of the Connecticut River Valley Industrial Corridor, Baywood Publishers, 2009. John Hacket, Race to the Bottom. Lightning Source,

2004 Max Holland, When the Machine Stopped. 1989. Annalee Saxenian, Regional Advantage. Harvard University Press, 1996.

2 Dr. John Hackett taught here after he retired from managing a heavy-equipment manufacturer in the mid-west. He was an exceptional person: well-grounded in economic theory, steeped in practical business experience, and dedicated to the communities in which he lived. I had hoped we could co-teach this course, but he died one year ago. To bring his spirit into the room, we will read his novel about the decline of a manufacturing company in the 1980s. Though he mentions the threat of wages in Mexico, the chief villain is the chief financial officer, the plot thickens. The concept of productivity is going to be central to manufacturing, and so we turn to the economists of the industrial revolution to get some grounding in it. We will use excerpts from Adam Smith (1759, 1776) and Karl Marx (1867) to stimulate our thinking about productivity. Smith also writes about social cohesion, and a more modern perspective is provided by Robert Putnam and Edward Glaeser. Annalee Saxenian's book explains why some parts of the US have become centers of high-tech innovation, while others have not. In addition to these texts, I expect everyone in the class to read technical things on local economics, such as the PSNH annual economic outlook and any other technical reports which we come across because these will give you the local facts to use to talk to people. Grading: This is a hands-on course completing a group research project. Each person will contribute by means of writing up one on-site visit to a plant, interviewing one local businessperson or worker in manufacturing, and creating two graphs in Excel, with a page describing what the graphs tell us. These will count for 40% of your grade, with 50% coming from more traditional in-class assignments including a midterm and a five-page essay applying economic theory to one of our themes. The class will present its findings to the community in an oral presentation Tuesday April 24. You will make a portfolio of the bolded parts of the table below which we will donate to the community. A truly polished portfolio will bump up your final grade. Assignment Percentage of Overall Grade 1. Take-Home Reading Questions and In- Class Assignments 20% or 10% 2. Observation of a manufacturing process 2-3 pages (think Pin Factory) 10% 3. Collect data, and make two graphs, explaining why they are relevant to the discussion (2 graphs plus