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BUSENV 1706 - MARKET MANIPULATIONS: CRISES, BUBBLES, ROBBER BARONS AND CORPORATE SAINTSMinimum Credits: 3 Maximum Credits: 3 Market Manipulations is a course about the forms of market failure and the generalizations we can draw to understand market behavior in the future. The course compares financial panics in U.S. business history: 1792, 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893/95, 1907, 1929, and 2008. How can we generalize to understand future panics? We look at major forms of market scams, including bubbles (Tulipomania, South Sea Bubble, Dot Con Bubble), Ponzi schemes, and typical behaviors of con artists (e.g., Gregor MacGregor) and generalize their common patterns. We consider the origin of the modern business firm (joint stock trading company) as the solution to the general agency problems of managing risk and providing assurance. We examine how Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Westinghouse built their companies, seeking monopoly, and identify the "monopolist's playlist," generalizations about patterns of monopoly-building. These tactics surprisingly remain as relevant today as they were during what Mark Twain called the "Gilded Age." We shift to the Progressive Era, and pushback. Coxey's Army was the first march on Washington, anticipating the New Deal 40 years later. The "stunt journalists" and "muckrakers," including Nellie Bly, Jacob Riis, Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, and Ray Stannard Baker, sought to influence repair of market defects via journalistic investigation. We look at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911 and the career of Frances Perkins. We review causes of the Crash of 1929/Great Depression. Thus, this course is highly unusual in using events in business history to generalize about our expectations of business behavior today and in the future. Academic Career: Undergraduate Course Component: Lecture Grade Component: Letter Grade
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