Course: Principles of Macroeconomics 

Course Objectives: Course objectives are: (1) to introduce students to basic measures of aggregate-level economic performance such as gross domestic product, personal income, unemployment, and the consumer price index; and (2) to present the major (competing) theories of national income and employment, inflation, exchange rates and the balance of trade, as well as the policy recommendations to which the alternate theories give rise.

 Textbook:

Core Material (material covered in all sections offered of this course):

• The economic problem (scarcity)
• Economic resources
• The production possibilities curve
• The principle of comparative advantage
• National income accounting
• Definition and measurement of unemployment
• Definition and measurement of inflation
• Market failures/public goods
• The public sector/principles of taxation
• Say's Law and the (classical) market for financial capital
• The classical explanation of unemployment based on wage rigidity
• The (Keynesian) income-expenditure model
• The expenditure multiplier
• The consumption function
• The (simple) theory of investment
• Exchange rates
• Income-expenditure analysis for an open economy
• Fiscal policy
• The definition, functions, and measurement of money
• The Federal Reserve system
• Bank money-creation/the money multiplier
• Monetary policy
• The liquidity preference theory/money in the Keynesian system
• The equation of exchange/Monetarism
• The Phillips curve/the NAIRU

Economics Course Descriptions