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

Credits: 4
Planned Offering: Spring 2012 and alternate years

Prerequisite: ECON 101.This course investigates the automobile industry from an interdisciplinary perspective. Why did GM file bankruptcy? Why do we have 600-plus new passenger vehicles available in the US, and what is the cost of that diversity? How and why has the automobile shifted the rhythm of daily life, with the growth of suburbs remote from jobs, and what are the costs and benefits of that? What of safety and the environment? The course also considers cars themselves, the subject of two Tom Wolfe stories in The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby.Smitka.