This course introduces students to the wide-ranging and evolving policy dimensions of labor markets. We begin with an analysis of the microeconomics of labor markets, presenting the competitive markets and monopsony pricing models as benchmarks. The course then turns to the institutional features of markets, including topics such as collective bargaining, labor standards, and minimum wage laws.

This one-week travel class to Amsterdam offers an immersive journey into the heart of sustainable urbanism. The course offers a unique opportunity for students to delve deep into the city's pioneering approaches to sustainable mobility, climate adaptation, and urban tech.

This course introduces graduate students to the field of community wealth-building and the movement for a solidarity economy. Students will examine the role of public policy in shaping racial inequality in the U.S.; ways that community groups have organized against redlining and for access to capital and neighborhood equity; strategies for ensuring community-led economic development and a just transition from an extractive to a regenerative economy; and technical tools needed to advance cooperative economics and locally-controlled development.

This course is about the process of scoping and planning public sector investment projects and the basic knowledge and skills required for their financial and economic appraisal (‘ex-ante’ evaluation).

The focus is on urban infrastructure projects identified, prioritized, and appraised through local/municipal planning processes. Case studies include water supply and sewerage, urban transport, solid waste management and green infrastructure.

For better or worse, both affordable housing and renewable energy projects in the US are mostly built and owned by private developers and corporations. These private developers in turn are reliant on private capital provided by investors, corporations and banks. Almost all these investors rely heavily on federal tax credits.  90% of affordable housing in the US receives a subsidy through the low-income housing tax credit (“LIHTC”). Virtually all large-scale wind and solar projects receive tax credit subsides as well (“ITC” or “PTC”).

This is the first course in a two-course sequence in housing policy, with an emphasis on major federal policies and the connection between housing, place and opportunity. This first course explores the historic, economic and social context of current housing policy and debates in the U.S., including how housing and community conditions and policies are intertwined. It provides an overview of housing policies, and how they play out on the ground.

This course, “Urban Design— Visualization Tools & Neighborhood Challenges,” will introduce students to visualization techniques in a series of linked exercises during the first half of the semester; in the second half of the semester, students will further develop these visualization and design tools as they address challenges and opportunities in a rapidly-changing New York City neighborhood. Instructor Joanna Simon will teach the first half of the course while Professor Louise Harpman will teach the second half.

This class is about the infrastructure systems that make up the built environment of cities, and that can make cities more or less sustainable and equitable. As humans face concurrent crises of climate change and inequality, most of the earth’s population lives in cities and relies on environmental infrastructure for basic needs like water, sanitation, housing, and mobility. What makes a system sustainable and resilient to climate change?

Students in this course will explore the spatial aspects of inequality, including racial segregation, concentrated poverty, and government structure. Course materials will investigate the consequences of these inequalities for individuals, communities, and American society as a whole, as well as how these seemingly-intractable problems were created by and continue because of public policy decisions. This course will be an interactive experience, requiring preparation before coming to class and active exchange during class.

Over the last few decades, disparities in income, wealth, and mobility have widened in the United States, but the U.S. fares worse in wealth inequality than income inequality. Wealth, in particular, is crucial to many functions across the life course and between generations, including but not limited to: spending on healthcare and education, acquiring and retaining investments for profit, weathering unexpected expenses or shocks, ascribing social status, and transferring assets to children and/or other family members.

This course will focus on the issuance and management of debt by state and local governments as well as nonprofit institutions. The course will serve as an overview of how municipal and nonprofit borrowers access the capital markets, primarily through the issuance of tax-exempt bonds. Students will understand the role of the various participants in the capital markets, including but not limited to the issuer, underwriter, financial advisor, legal counsel, rating agency, insurer and investor.