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California State University, San Bernardino CSUSB ScholarWorks Coyote Economist Economics Winter 2017 CE Winter 2017 Coyote Economist Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/coyote-economist  Part of the Economics Commons Recommended Citation Coyote Economist, "CE Winter 2017" (2017). Coyote Economist. 21. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/coyote-economist/21 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Economics at CSUSB ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Coyote Economist by an authorized administrator of CSUSB ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact scholarworks@csusb.edu. 1Coyote EconomistInside this Issue:Scholarships..........................2ODE ......................................2Staying Informed ..................2Economics Hiring .................3Next Year’s Classes ................4Spring Classes .......................5News from the Department of Economics, CSUSBVolume 23, Issue 2  Winter 2017Department of EconomicsCSUSB 909-537-5511http://economics.csusb.eduFacebook: CSUSB Department of Economicscontinued on page 3The Political Economy of Trump’s Winby Daniel MacDonaldWhy did Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election? There are many answers to this question, perhaps too many. Some explanations emphasize Trump’s appeal to certain sections of the American population, like Whites, men, the less educated (for example, those without a bache-lor’s degree), and Evangelical Christians. And, indeed, he sometimes appealed to some members of these various groups using racism, sexism, and xenophobia. But there are economic explanations, too, which together form a political economic view of Trump’s victory. While certainly not the sole cause, a very good argument can be made that political economy can explain a major portion of Trump’s success.One common economic explanation is that Trump was able to win over a broad swath of the middle class (see the Fall 2016 Coyote Economist for details on some of Trump’s key proposals). In the national exit polls, Trump won a majority of people with incomes with incomes $50,000-$199,999, while Clinton captured the majority of voters making more and less than that. But there are other, deeper reasons why the economy mattered. Consider one way to understand why Trump won: compare his performance to that of his predecessor, Mitt Romney, in the 2012 presidential election. Doing so helps to eliminate some of the emphasis on demographics. For example, exit polls and other statistics show that Trump actually fared better with minorities than Romney did. Of course, Trump still needed to appeal to whites, males, and various religious groups in order to retain their support, but the point is that non-demographic factors explain how he was able to do so much better than Romney because increased Republican turnout was not enough in and of itself. Economics clearly mattered.Political Economy of SoCalThis Spring, Professor MacDonald is giving a trial run of a potential new course, Political Economy of Southern California. It is being taught as Economics 390. The objective of the course is to understand the ways in which the economy shapes life in Southern California. The major issues to be covered are the housing market, Prop 13 and slow growth politics, Southern California’s role in the Great Recession, inequality, social and political movements, the labor market, and the future of public transit. Students will write a research paper on a topic that interests them, where the primary emphasis will be on exploring the economic roots of that topic.If you’re interested in Southern California (and who isn’t!), be sure to sign up for this new course.2If you’re receiving the Coyote Economist, then you’re on our mailing list and everything is as it should be. But, if you know of an Economics Major, or an Econ Fellow Traveler, who is not receiving the Coyote Economist through email, then please have him/her inform our Administrative Support Coordinator, Ms. Jacqueline Carrillo, or the Chair of the Economics Department, Professor Eric Nilsson. Our phone number is 909-537-5511.  You can stay informed by consulting: Our Website - http://economics.csusb.edu/ Our Facebook Page- http://www.facebook.com/pages/CSUSB-Department-of-Economics/109500729082841 Chair of the Economics Department – enilsson@csusb.eduEconomics Scholarships! Application Deadline–April 21Staying Informed of CSUSB Department of Economics Events and NewsEach spring the Economics Department invites applications for its scholarships.  Scholarship winners are announced in early June; recipients receive their awards around October 1, after they have enrolled in fall quarter classes.  The dol-lar amount of each scholarship award will be approximately $1,500.  This spring the department plans to award up to five scholarships. If you are eligible, please apply!To be eligible to apply for an Economics scholarship, students must:1. Attend CSUSB as a declared economics major (any track);2. Have completed a minimum of 9 semester, or 12 quarter, units of economics course work with at least a 3.00 grade           point average (2.75 for the Economics Alumni Scholarship and the Sean Brunske Economics Scholarships);3. Have an overall grade point average of at least 2.75 (2.50 for the Sean Brunske Economics Scholarships); 4. Have completed at least 30 semester, or 45 quarter, units of college course work;5. Be enrolled at CSUSB on at least a one-half-time basis during fall quarter 2016.In addition to information about your grades and the economics courses you have completed, you’ll need one letter of recommendation from an economics professor and a 250-word, typewritten, statement of purpose.  When asking for a letter of recommendation, be sure to request it from your professor at least two weeks prior to the application deadline.  Also your statement of purpose must discuss your post-graduation career/educational plans.  The overall quality of these submitted materials determines the scholarship recipients. Scholarship application forms will be available at the Economics Department website (http://economics.csusb.edu/) and in the Department office (SB-451) by the week of April 3.  Completed applications are due Friday, April 21.OMICRON DELTA EPSILON (ODE): Application deadline–April 21ODE, an International Honor Society in Economics, encourages devotion to the advancement of economics and to the scholarly effort to make freedom from want and deprivation a reality for all mankind.  ODE is one of the world’s largest academic honor societies and currently has 652 chapters throughout the world.ODE was established in 1963 as a result of a merger of two honor societies, Omicron Delta Gamma and Omicron Chi Epsilon. Omicron Delta Gamma was founded in 1915 by John Roger Commons and Frank W. Taussig, and Omicron Chi Epsilon was founded in 1956 by Alan A. Brown.   If you have taken a minimum of 20 units in economics and have an overall GPA of 3.0 and an economics GPA of 3.0, then you can join ODE. The name of the CSUSB chapter of ODE is Alpha Delta.  Applications to join ODE are available from Professor Mayo Toruño or the Economics Department Office (SB-451). The initiation fee of $35 covers a membership scroll and a one-year subscription to the American Economist. The deadline to join ODE for this academic year is April 21.3As is well know, Trump appealed to blue-collar workers affected by an increasingly globalized economy. While a globalized economy is supposed to—in theory—promote specialization and economic efficiency by shifting resources to their most productive uses, the reality is much more complicated. First, and foremost, expanded trade leads to winners and losers. And sometimes, the losers of the trade game suffer for many years and fail to recover from the shift in resources for many, many years. Trump’s win can be explained, at least in part, by economic insecurity and the negative impact that expanded trade has had on manufacturing jobs, and how that has led to economi-cally distressed areas which Trump’s anti-globalization message was able to capitalize on. The question then arises of what kind of data might exist to prove this thesis.In a post-election redux, Mike Davis identified a “lakeshore rim” of counties in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania as the “most visible epicenter of the revolt against globalization.” Many of these (rather large) coun-ties supported Obama in 2012 but switched to Trump in 2016. Com-bined, these three states represent 54 Electoral College votes. All three went to Obama in 2012, and all three went to Trump in 2016. If Clinton had won them, she would have won the election and not just the popular vote. It, there-fore, seems reasonable to examine this lakeshore rim more carefully, because these three states could have been enough to switch the election results. Obama won Erie County, Pennsyl-vania in 2012 with 58% of the vote. In 2016, it went for Trump, who won it with about 49% of the vote to Clinton’s 47%. Manufacturing employment has been declining in Erie since 1975, but it remains a major source of employ-ment: General Electric Transportation Systems operates a locomotive plant there and is the county’s top employer. While workers are not heavily union-ized in the private sector, the vulnera-bility of the working class in this area to general economic downturns (in 2009 it suffered major layoffs as locomotive production at GE was cut during the Great Recession) as well as movements of capital south (in 2011, GE announced that it would open a second locomotives plant in Forth Worth Texas, though there have not been any layoffs at the Erie plant yet) likely helped create the economic insecurity that Trump was able to capitalize on. Obama won Monroe County, Mich-igan slightly in 2012, while Trump won with a much larger 58% of the vote in 2016. Monroe’s economy is also built precariously on manufacturing: an auto parts plant owned by a Ford subsidiary, and which used to be the largest employer, closed down in 2009. The county is still the home to vari-ous automotive parts manufacturing plants (engines, plastics, and glass) that represent some of its top employers. Monroe is also home of the Monroe Power Plant, the fourth largest coal-firing plan in America owned by DTE Energy and is the second-largest em-ployer in the county. As is well known, Trump did extremely well in “coal country,” and when combined with the strong manufacturing presence in the county, the two help explain Trump’s popularity.Finally, there is the case of Ohio, where Trump won about 52% of the Continued from page 1Trump’s Win... the losers of the trade game can suffer for many years....continued on page 4...Trump’s win can be explained, at least in part, by economic insecurity....The Economics Department has been given approval to search for a new eco-nomics faculty. The search was started last summer by developing an ad and placing it in the “Job Openings for Economists” website run by the Ameri-can Economics Association (AEA).    The department received applications from a wide range of economists scattered throughout the United States. After reviewing the supplied information (curriculum vitae’s, letters of recommendation, sample papers, etc.), the Department Recruitment Committee selected the top 18 candidates for face-to-face interviews at the AEA meetings held in Chicago in early January of 2017. The Department Recruitment Committee narrowed the list of candidates to the top three and is currently in the process of bringing the top three candidates to campus for further interviews. There’s a chance that we might be able to select two faculty, but at the very least we hope that one new faculty member will be joining us in the Fall. We don’t know who the new faculty will be, but you can be assured that the CSUSB Economics Department spared no effort in finding the best. You will be informed of the new faculty in the Spring issue of The Coyote Economist. Department Recruiting New FacultyWe’re Still on Facebook!Joining us on Facebook is an important way of keeping up with Departmental news and events, as well as getting information on political economy.Simply search for The CSUSB Department of Economics on Facebook and you’ll find us. We’re easy to find. If you’ve not already done this, do it today!4Continued from page 3Trump’s Winvote; Clinton only won 44%, with third parties picking up the remaining 4%. This margin was a major surprise for pundits. In many ways, the exit poll results mirrored the national statistics mentioned earlier—divisions across race, class, and sex. In other ways, they point to a state that was remarkably uniform in its support of Trump. How could this be?It was a few northern counties in Ohio that went for Obama in 2012 but switched to Trump in 2016 which allowed Trump to pull away from Clin-ton and win. While cities like Cincin-nati and Columbus have seen some private-sector growth, the rest of the state—and in particular these north-ern counties—have suffered heavily in terms of lost jobs from trade and the Great Recession. In fact, some news reports date the decline even further back to the reces-sion of 2001. Since 2000, Ohio has dropped 13 places in the ranking of all states by median income—only Geor-gia, Michigan, Delaware, and Nevada fared worse. A large number of jobs have left the state as corporation flight to the U.S. South—and Mexico and other countries abroad—has drained the economy of well-paying manufac-turing jobs. (While Ohio also ranks high in coal production, it’s concentrated in the eastern and southeastern parts of the state—parts that had voted for Rom-ney anyway in 2012.)And of course, a Trump win is also a Clinton failure. These results are just as much about Trump’s successes as they are about the failure of the Clinton campaign to connect with blue collar and middle-class workers. But in the end, it’s still about the economy, in particular, political economy.•Tentative Courses for Next Academic YearFall Quarter200 Principles of Microeconomics202 Principles of Macroeconomics302 Intermediate Microeconomics311 Economics in Elementary and Middle Schools335 Tools of Economics Analysis360 Economics of the Environment421 Economic History of the US435 Multinational Corporations445 Political EconomyWinter Quarter104 Economics of Social Issues200 Principles of Microeconomics202 Principles of Macroeconomics300 Intermediate Macroeconomics302 Intermediate Microeconomics311 Economics in Elementary and Middle Schools333 Political Economy of Women410 Money and Banking430 International Economics455 Economic Development460 Labor Economics475 Public Economics480 Quantitative Methods In Economics600 Proseminar in EconomicsSpring Quarter104 Economics of Social Issues200 Principles of Microeconomics202 Principles of Macroeconomics300 Intermediate Macroeconomics311 Economics in Elementary and Middle Schools322 Managerial Economics335 Tools of Economics Analysis390 Political Economy of Southern California410 Money and Banking450 Global Economy490 Introduction to Econometrics500 History of Economy Thought5Spring CoursesTitle Course Instructor Days Start Time End TimeECON SOCIAL ISSUES 104 Nilsson TR 2:00 PM 3:50 PMPRIN MICROECONOMICS 200 Asheghian MW 10:00 AM 11:50 AMPRIN MICROECONOMICS 200 Asheghian MW 2:00 PM 3:50 PMPRIN MICROECONOMICS 200 Hayes TR 2:00 PM 3:50 PMPRIN MICROECONOMICS 200 Aldana onlinePRIN MICROECONOMICS 200 Konyar TR 4:00 PM 5:50 PMPRIN MACROECONOMICS 202 Dulgeroff MW 12:00 PM 1:50 PMPRIN MACROECONOMICS 202 Dulgeroff MW 4:00 PM 5:50 PMPRIN MACROECONOMICS 202 Konyar TR 6:00 PM 7:50 PMPRIN MACROECONOMICS 202 Aldana onlinePRIN MACROECONOMICS 202 Staff TR 10:00 AM 11:50 AMINTER MACROECONOMICS 300 Dildar MW 2:00 PM 3:50 PMTOOLS ECON ANALYSIS 335 MacDonald TR 10:00 AM 11:50 AMECON OF ENVIRON 360 Dildar MW 10:00 AM 11:50 AMTOPIC: PE OF SO CAL 390 MacDonald TR 2:00 PM 3:50 PMMONEY & BANKING 410 Pierce MW 6:00 PM 7:50 PMGLOBAL ECONOMY 450 Asheghian MW 4:00 PM 5:50 PMINTRO ECONOMETRICS 490 Hayes TR 6:00 PM 7:50 PMHIST ECON THOUGHT 500 Toruño TR 4:00 PM 5:50 PMECON IN ELEM & MID SCHOOLS 311 Gardner S 9:00 AM 12:50 PMUNDERSTANDING CAPITALISM SSCI 320 Toruño TR 6:00 PM 7:50 PM

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