User:Ald10

Asher Dvir-Djerassi [[Image:Asher photo.jpg|border|right|392x294px|Asher photo.jpg]]
I am a second year student in my Div II. I am interested in politics, public policy, and economics, with a particularly curiosity about European Welfare states, specifically the Danish Welfare state.

'''Div II Concentration - The political economy of Europe and the United States in an era of globalization. '''

Since the 1970’s the international economic system has transformed in a process that has been largely termed economic globalization. As the advanced industrialized countries confronted a period of declining growth and stagflation after nearly 30 years of vigorous and uninterrupted growth commentators, politicians, and the public suggested that the US and Europe faced a crisis of the welfare state and Keynesianism. From this supposed crisis a certain set of policies were adopted that were largely framed as adopting market forces. In Europe, for instance, welfare institutions were transformed to stem bureaucratization and limit moral hazards. While in the United States, for example, financial markets were deregulated allowing for the market to distribute access to credit instead of public policy. I am interested in what social and political processes in the postwar period caused the certain economic structure that we find today in the US and Europe, and how these economic policies have responded to globalization and have given rise to globalization.

I will ask questions such as the following: How has the European social model and American policy reacted and how has it interacted with the large scale change from a manufacturing based economy to a service based economy? How has deindustrialization influenced financialization, or if has not what gave rise to financialization? Has capital become more mobile, and if it has what does that mean for the future of the welfare state? How do welfare institutions in Europe and the US interact with the contemporary economic environment? What explain widespread economic differences in Europe? How can persistently low rates of employment be alleviated in Europe? Is the Danish flexicurity model an appropriate set of policies to ameliorate fundamental problems that many EU member states face? And even if it is appropriate is it possible to transport economic policies from one nation to another? How important is social capital, for instance, in the viability of certain public policies

To answer these very complex economic, political, and historical questions I will take courses in economics, statistics, mathematics, political science, and possibly history. In the fall of 2011 I am taking calculus at UMass, while studying American educational policy, welfare policy, and the American criminal justice system at Amherst College. I will take higher level calculus at UMass Jan term 2012 and possibly the summer of 2012. Additionally, I plan on taking statistics at Smith or Mount Holyoke in spring of 2012, along with Intermediate Micro and Macroeconomics at Smith or Mount Holyoke. In my third year I wish to study Danish and European welfare, economics, and politics at the University of Copenhagen.