Course Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

• Define and explain measures of macro-economic performance.
• Identify sources of long-run growth, and explain their connection to improvements in standard of living and persistent economic inequality.
• Define different types of unemployment, explain their causes, and discuss why why zero unemployment should not be the goal.
• Explain the causes and real costs of inflation.
• Explain causes and consequences of short-run fluctuations in the economy.
• Define monetary and fiscal policy, explain their pros and cons, and describe how each affects the economy in the long-run and the short-run.

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

• Apply concepts of supply and demand to determine the equilibrium price and quantity in a market
• Examine how consumers and firms weigh costs and benefits when making decisions
• Evaluate the extent to which markets promote or fail to promote efficient and equitable outcomes, possibly because of government policy
• Identify and differentiate market structures, ranging from perfect competition to monopoly
• Acquire the necessary tools to succeed in subsequent courses that rely on microeconomic analysis

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

• Explain the applicability of economic thought to health care issues
• Evaluate how health care behavior can be studied with economic models
• Understand the structural framework of the health care system in the U.S.
• Compare the health care system in the U.S. to other countries
• Discuss methods used to regulate health care systems
• Analyze current policy questions related to the health care system

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

• State the relationship between culture and economic outcomes and understand the significance of intergenerational social construction as it relates to existing economic systems and thought.
• Understand the evolution of economic thought and the influence of economic assumptions on consumption and production behavior.
• Understand the significance of the attribution of “rational” to economic agent behavior and the importance of economic literacy in the attainment of rational behavior.
• Identify externalities and the mechanics of market failure as they relate to sustainability.
• Define sustainability in relation to economic systems.
• Discuss the concept of sustainability from the perspective of conscious consumption and appreciate how values fundamentally determine economic outcomes.

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

• Define and explain measures of macroeconomic performance
• Identify sources of long-run growth, and explain their connections to improvements in standards of living
• Define different types of unemployment (including the natural rate); explain one or more theories of causes of unemployment
• Explain one or more theories of causes of inflation, and real costs of inflation
• Explain one or more theories of causes of short-run economic fluctuations
• Explain the mechanics of monetary and fiscal policy, one or more theories of how they affect GDP and inflation, and some benefits and drawbacks of activist monetary and fiscal policy

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

• Apply concepts of demand, supply, and elasticity to analyze the effects of changes in policy and market determinants on equilibrium price and quantity
• Break down the forces underlying demand and supply, including consumer utility, as well as firm production functions and input prices
• Quantify the extent to which markets promote or fail to promote efficient and equitable outcomes because of market power, government intervention, information asymmetries, and externalities
• Differentiate the extent to which firm decisions depend on market power and on the conduct of other firms by analyzing the market structures in which they operate
• Acquire the necessary analytical skills to succeed in advanced economics courses

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

• Describe the core aspects of data collection and appropriate sampling techniques
• Implement different types of variable transformations typically encountered in economics
• Identify and generate appropriate visualizations for different types of data
• Compute and interpret descriptive statistics
• Conduct statistical inference such as hypothesis testing and confidence interval estimation
• Demonstrate proficiency in using a software to conduct statistical analysis

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

• Apply regression analysis to test economic hypotheses motivated by micro- and macro-economics
• Identify the appropriate econometric model suitable for different types of data
• Transform economic variables and demonstrate an understanding of model specification
• Evaluate and interpret econometric results
• Draw economic and policy implications from econometric results
• Demonstrate proficiency in using a software to conduct econometric analysis

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

• Explain and describe the elements, structure, and behavior of food systems.
• Use a food systems approach to study food problems in diverse countries and settings.
• Identify and use data to analyze food systems.
• Describe economics of consumer and producer behavior as it applies to food and agriculture sectors.
• Apply economics and systems thinking tools to develop policy solutions to food problems in global or national settings.

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

• Analyze firm behavior with regards to the demand for workers and wage determination in both the short-run and long-run in both a competitive labor market and a labor market where firms have market power.
• Explain the forces that determine wages, employment, and unemployment and the role that technology, trade, and immigration play in determining these outcomes.
• Compare and contrast different labor market policies designed to address the differences in labor market outcomes associated with gender, ethnicity, race, occupation, and skill level.
• Analyze labor market data and generate statistics on labor market indicators such as the labor force participation rate, income inequality, and the returns to investment in human capital.
• Explain the differences that have existed and currently exist in the labor market with regards to race, ethnicity, and gender and apply economic theories to differentiate between discrimination and decisions reflecting individual choice as they relate to labor market outcomes.

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

• Use welfare economics to judge the social desirability of different statutory and common-law rules.
• Examine the compatibility, or lack thereof, between equity and efficiency in various common-law rulings.
• Describe how the common law of torts has evolved to create the appropriate incentives to engage in accident avoidance.
• Analyze economic issues related to establishing and transferring property rights.
• Assess the social importance of contracts and how remedies for breach influence incentives.
• Evaluate the economic approach to crime and punishment.

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

• Explain the roles, tools, and policies central banks have in attempting to influence their economies.
• Compare and contrast these polices across various types of political systems (democratic, communist, socialist, etc).
• Explain the factors and the reasons that exchange rates change on a macro level (not minute-to-minute or day-by-day) and apply these factors to the decision making process(es) of an international business manager or currency trader.
• Demonstrate mastery of time value of money calculations as they relate to bond pricing.
• Interpret the Federal Reserve’s most recent balance sheet and income statements, and explain the reasons for major year-over-year changes to these financial statements.
• Compare and contrast U.S. fiscal actions throughout history to identify those policies that in today’s light might be considered unjust or discriminatory across various demographic groups.

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

• Define various methods of aggregating individual preferences to make collective decisions in a non-market setting beyond that of simple majority voting.
• Formally apply criteria to collective decision processes and compare and assess their social desirability.
• Identify the factors such as utility that affect a voter’s participation, preferences, and behavior; and evaluate the factors that lead to political engagement and electoral outcomes.
• Define various non-market methods for the allocation of goods and the apportionment of government representation.
• Assess the desirability of various allocation and apportionment methods.
• Use game theory in applications of collective and interactive non-market decision making and evaluate the behavioral predictions in the context of phenomena such as logrolling, the principal-agent problem, and rent-seeking.

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

• Describe the important roles of international and domestic institutions that govern international transactions.
• Identify an economy’s sources of gains from trade under classical and modern theories of trade.
• Explain and illustrate the distributional effects of trade policies on income and jobs.
• Measure and explain international economic transactions, including balance of payments accounts and exchange rates.
• Illustrate and explain the effects of international events on the macroeconomic performance of an economy in both flexible and fixed exchange rate systems.
• Gather data and evaluate the macroeconomic performance of an economy with a focus on the effects of participating in the global economy.

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

• Describe the main factors behind sustained economic growth.
• Use economic models to explain the contribution of different variables to overall growth and development.
• Apply data to test economic growth models.
• Compare and contrast various theories and empirical findings in the economic growth and development literature.

By end of this course, students should be able to:

• Have a thorough understanding of the foundation of game theoretic models and their applications across a variety of social sciences.
• Solve repeated and stochastic games, Bayensian games, and extensive form games.
• Understand how game theory can be applied to real world settings such as auctions and firm competition.
• Apply game theoretic models to address key research questions within economics and other social sciences.