INSTRUCTOR,  TIMES, and PLACES
Professor James W. Harrington;  416C Smith Hall;  jwh@u.washington.edu;  206-616-3821;  fax 206-543-3313
Class meetings:  MW, 2:30 - 4:20 p.m., 404 Smith Hall
Office Hours:  MW 4:30 - 5:30 p.m.

STUDENT  LEARNING  OBJECTIVES
I hope that students leaving this course will be able to recognize and articulate the challenges facing:

• scholars as they try to explain patterns and effects of international trade and investment;
• governments as they try to manage trade and investment so as to benefit their politically powerful interests;  and
• corporations as the try to source and export  goods and services internationally.

To be able to do that, students must:

• understand and critique basic principles of international trade and FDI;.
• gain some familiarity with trends of and influences on trade and FDI flows and policies, focusing on Canada, China, Mexico, and the US;
  
• gain experience in using concepts and statistical information to develop and present arguments about trade policies;  and
  
• become aware of key processes of and decision criteria for foreign exchange, exporting, and supply logistics.

The actual work of the course is designed to help students develop skills for:

• quickly breaking a large task into components;
• synthesizing material gathered by others;
• taking joint leadership and responsibility for group actions;
• assessing and diagnosing group processes.

INSTRUCTOR'S  TEACHING  OBJECTIVES
As instructor, my objectives are to:

• present lectures and on-line notes that provide both substantive content and some synthesis of readings and assignments;
• design individual and interactive activities that get students to do something and thereby learn the material, in addition to passive listening and reading;
• allow time and spaces during class meetings for students to meet in designated groups;
• provide individuals and teams tools to diagnose and correct group dynamics;
• give tests that assess these outcome and content objectives
• assess students in ways that reward individual effort while encouraging students' learning from each other.

REQUIREMENTS

Meetings and readings.  The course meets twice a week;  each student needs to be at each meeting.  (I will not take attendance, but between frequent in-class exercises and regular meetings of project teams during class time, absences will be a substantial problem).  Read the assigned material before the class;  we will discuss and at times have in-class exercises to reinforce the assigned readings. 

• Batra, R.  1993.  The Myth of Free Trade.  New York:  Charles Scribners's Sons.  Also published in paperback, Touchstone Books.  [Required reading;  available at University Book Store and on reserve at OUGL]
  
• Daniels, J.D.,  L.H. Radebaugh, and D.P. Sullivan.  2007.  International Business, Environments and Operations, 11th edition.  Reading, MA:  Addison-Wesley.  [Optional reading:  available at University Book Store;  on reserve at OUGL]
• Dicken, P.  2003.  The changing global economic map. Ch.3 in Global Shift: Transforming the World Economy, 4th edition.  New York: Guilford Press.  [Required reading:  available through  electronic reserve at UW Libraries]
• Gereffi, G.  2001.  Shifting governance structures in global commodity chains, with special reference to the Internet.  American Behavioral Scientist 44(10): 1616-1637.  [Required;  available through the UW Libraries list of electronic journals]
  
• Krugman, P.  1996.  Pop Internationalism.  Cambridge, Mass.:  MIT Press.  [3 chapters required;  available at University Book Store and on reserve at OUGL]
  
• Sturgeon, T.J.  2001.  How do we define value chains and production networks?  IDS Bulletin 32(3).  Available at http://www.globalvaluechains.org/publications/Sturgeon.pdf and http://web.mit.edu/ipc/www.pubs/articles/00-011.pdf
  

First project.
I will divide the class into five-person teams.  Each team will select either Canada, China, or Mexico, and will assign tasks so that each team member has one output assignment and one process assignment.  The output assignments are:

The process assignments are:

This work will be done between 4-30 October;  the schedule below has more specific deadlines.  I'll provide you with a great deal more information about these output and process assignments, and the grading criteria.

or:

The process assignments are:

This work will be done between 6 November and 4 December;  the schedule below has more specific deadlines.  I'll provide you with a great deal more information about these output and process assignments and the grading criteria.

Tests.  There will be two in-class tests (1 November and 6 December):  they will not be explicitly cumulative.  Each test will likely employ a range of question formats.

Response papers.  Each student will prepare three 500-1000-word responses to questions that I will provide to guide your reading of assigned articles (see the schedule of topics and assignments, below).  These are due at the beginning of the relevant class meeting, during which we will discuss the responses in groups.

GRADING

Grades on tests and assignments.  Each test and assignment will be graded on a percentage basis.  Content, clarity, writing, and format all count in the grading of the assignments.  Be especially careful about plagiarism:  more than three words in the order you read them somewhere else (including on the WWW, including my own lecture notes) must be set off in quotation marks and given a full citation.

Late assignments.  Tests must be taken on the scheduled day, except by prior arrangement with the instructor or ex post written communication with the instructor based on illness (in this latter circumstance, the instructor will need documentation of your illness or that of someone in your care;  this will be handled on a case-by-case basis).  Because the assignments are so inter-related, we really cannot have late assignments;  they are due at the beginning of each designated class period.  

Final grades.  The final grade for the course will be calculated as follows.  Each graded item can contribute up to a specified number of points toward the quarter's total that can equal up to 100 points.  Each student’s final grade reflects the number of these 100 points the student has earned during the quarter.
 

3 response papers & discussions	24 points	Test 1	18 points
Project 1	20 points	Test 2	18 points
Project 2	20 points	TOTAL	100 points

   
Total scores (on a scale of 0 - 100) will translate into final grades (on a scale of 0.0 - 4.0) approximately according to the  scale below:  the instructor may be more lenient than this. 

SCHEDULE  (with links to on-line notes;  optional reading in parentheses)