This course offers a comprehensive and engaging introduction to the economics of national security and the pursuit of economic objectives in a world of cascading or correlated shocks and security challenges. 

With the rise of protectionism, the weaponisation of interdependence and increasing geopolitical risk, economic and security policy can no longer be pursued in disciplinary or policy silos. There are policy tools and frameworks that can manage the positive and negative spillovers between the two. 

Students will critically examine competing conceptions of economic security and other frameworks that shape economic security policy debates, including comprehensive security, geoeconomics and security economics. The course will consider economic security as the relationship between economics and security from an economic perspective. 

The course examines the concepts, policy tools and institutional arrangements that affect states’ economic security. It begins with foundational economic concepts and builds towards applied analysis of major issues in economic security today, such as sanctions, market power, technology competition, weaponisation of trade, supply chain resilience, industrial policy and the design of international economic institutions. The course will provide frameworks for analysing the trade-offs and complementarities between economic and security objectives grounded in economic principles. It will help students understand the role of institutions, rules and norms in shaping incentives of states, actors and agents in international engagement. 

Drawing on historical and contemporary case studies and literature, the course will explore how small open economies, middle powers and great powers approach economic security differently. Policy responses will be explored and assessed.