ECON 244 - The Auto Industry: Economics, Society, Culture

Credits: 4
Planned Offering: Spring 2014 and alternate years

Prerequisite: ECON 101 and instructor consent. This course investigates the automobile industry from an interdisciplinary perspective, including a visit to factories and R&D facilities in Detroit. Why did GM file bankruptcy? Why do we have 600-plus new passenger vehicles available in the US – isn’t such diversity wasteful? How and why has the automobile shifted the rhythm of daily life, including the growth of suburbs and decline of cities? What of safety and the environment – electric vehicles? The course also considers cars themselves, the subject of two Tom Wolfe stories in The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. Smitka.