Capitalism: Success, Crisis and Reform - Video
By Douglas W. Rae
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Description
In this course, we will seek to interpret capitalism using ideas from biological evolution: Firms pursuing varied strategies and facing extinction when those strategies fail are analogous to organisms struggling for survival in nature. For this reason, it is less concerned with ultimate judgment of capitalism than with the ways it can be shaped to fit our more specific objectives – for the natural environment, public health, alleviation of poverty, and development of human potential in every child. Each book we read will be explicitly or implicitly an argument about good and bad consequences of capitalism.
Name | Description | Released | Price | ||
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1 | Video18 - Microfinance in South India | Professor Rae teaches the SELCO business case, about a distributed electric power generation scheme targeting rural Indians. | 4/8/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
2 | Video19 - Plight of the Bottom Billion | In a videotaped lecture, Professor Rae discusses problems with using gross domestic product (GDP) as a measure for societal wellbeing. | 4/8/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
3 | Video17 - The Case of Mister Balram Halwai | Professor Rae discusses Aravind Adiga's novel The White Tiger. | 4/8/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
4 | Video16 - Braudel's Bell Jar | Professor Rae explores Hernando de Soto's theories of dead and live capital and the power of property rights. | 4/8/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
5 | Video15 - Mass Affluence Comes to the Western World | Professor Rae discusses the rise of mass affluence, the joint stock corporation, and advertising/consumer culture in America. | 4/8/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
6 | Video14 - The Political and Judicial Elements of American Capitalism | Professor Rae uses the Merck-Vioxx business case to highlight political elements of U.S. capitalism, including government regulatory agencies, federalism, lobbying, regulatory capture, tort law and liability, and patent law. | 4/8/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
7 | Video12 - Accountability and Greed in Investment Banking | Professor Rae explores the creation of incentives and disincentives for individual action. | 4/8/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
8 | Video13 - The Mortgage Meltdown in Cleveland | Professor Rae discusses the subprime mortgage crisis. | 4/8/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
9 | Video11 - Guest Lecture by Will Goetzmann: Institutions and Incentives in Mortgages and Mortgage-Backed Securities | Guest speaker Will Goetzmann, Director of the Yale International Center for Finance and professor at the Yale School of Management, provides a brief history of debt and financial crises. | 4/8/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
10 | Video09 - Guest Lecture by Jim Alexander: Managing the Crooked E | Jim Alexander, former CFO of the Enron subsidiary Enron Global Power and Pipeline, offers an insider's account of Enron's corporate culture and operations before the company's spectacular fall. | 4/8/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
11 | Video24 - Capitalist Enterprise and Clean Water for a Bolivian City | In this final lecture of the semester, Professor Rae gives a summary of major themes, thinkers, and cases covered in the course. | 4/8/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
12 | Video08 - Mortal Life Cycle of a Great Technology | Professor Rae uses the case of Polaroid cameras to highlight key features of the capitalist system. | 4/8/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
13 | Video07 - Can You Sell a Scheme for Operating on Beating Hearts and Make a Business of It? | Dean of the Yale School of Management, Sharon Oster, explains the CardioThoracic business case. | 4/8/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
14 | Video05 - Property, Freedom, and the Essential Job of Government | A practical theory of freedom is discussed, based on Hayek's Constitution of Liberty. | 4/8/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
15 | Video06 - Rise of the Joint Stock Corporation | Professor Rae explains how the growing scale and complexity of railroads in the US were foundational to the development of modern capitalism. | 4/8/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
16 | Video22 - Guest Lecture by Paolo Zanonni, Part II | Guest speaker Paolo Zanonni, partner at Goldman Sachs, explains a major deal in the European utilities market. | 4/8/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
17 | Video23 - Marrying the Devil in Texas | Professor Rae discusses the case TXU v. EDF, about an electric company private equity deal that involves environmental interest groups. | 4/8/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
18 | Video21 - Guest Lecture by Paolo Zanonni, Part I | Guest speaker Paolo Zanonni, partner at Goldman Sachs, discusses the firm's transition from a straight partnership to a hybrid partnership / joint stock corporation. | 4/8/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
19 | Video20 - Policy Targets for Capitalist Development | Professor Rae begins by briefly discussing his recent trip to Washington, where he became more closely acquainted with the health care reform bill. | 4/8/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
20 | Video04 - Karl Marx, Joseph Schumpeter, and an Economic System Incapable of Coming to Rest | Professor Rae relates Marxist theories of monopoly capitalism to Schumpeter's theory of creative destruction. | 4/7/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
21 | Video03 - Counting the Fingers of Adam Smith's Invisible Hand | Professor Rae introduces Adam Smith's notion of the "invisible hand" of the market. | 4/7/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
22 | Video02 - Thomas Malthus and Inevitable Poverty | Professor Rae shows how countries over the last two centuries have experienced improved life expectancies and increased incomes per capita. | 4/7/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
23 | Video01 - Exploding Worlds and Course Introduction | Professor Rae introduces the concept of capital as accumulated wealth used to produce more wealth. | 4/7/2011 | Free | View in iTunes |
23 Items |
Customer Reviews
Fantastic
I feel so lucky to be able to listen/watch such a fantastic course on my way to work. Dr. Rae gives great balance in his discussions on capitalism and his friendly manner makes it easy to listen to. The guest lecturers are very knowledgable and the additional insight they provide really gives the course great depth. I only wish I had the supplemental readings he assigns his students to get a better background on the topics. But for the price I'm paying ($0), I'm happy with just the lectures!
Hmmmmm - not what I would have hoped for
I really like a lot of the free classes offered by Yale. The Evolution Ecology class is boss. The Financial Markets and Game Theory classes are on point.
This one is a bit dodgy. I want to say something extreme like the class was middling, intellectually dishonest, cowardly, a wasted opportunity blah blah blah. Instead I will say that I found a few things awesome and a lot of the material ... not a good match for my tastes and interests. I would have enjoyed something with more insight into practical capitalist kung fu, balanced with more info on white collar crime, fraud and corruption *within* the USA. Stuff like that. Also it would have been cool if the business cases were more up to date. Poloroid? OMG.
Dr. Rae's Lectures
Outstanding job by the people at Yale. Regardless of your background, download and watch as you will not be disappointed. Well Done!