Economics for CED
Syllabus
Spring 2004
Instructor: Noémi Giszpenc
Subject to change based on class feedback...
Each numbered topic may take more than one week to cover.
1. Intro
What is economics? What do economists assume about people? Scarcity, opportunity costs, and tradeoffs.
Microeconomics
2. Demand
Where does it come from and what influences it? Utility theory and Indifference theory; how neoclassical theory of demand fits into larger picture; Elasticity of demand.
3. Supply
Effects on firms' behavior of costs, competition, complementarities of factors of production, returns to scale
4. Supply and Demand: Markets
Efficiency, taxes, subsidies, price control, imperfect competition, externalities, public goods, market failure, game theory.
5. Markets and Information
Investment, risk, insurance, loans, bankruptcy.
Macroeconomics
6. National Income Accounting
Value added, "real" values, index numbers, measuring inequality
7. Growth
8. The Financial System
Money, interest rates, time discounts
9. International Trade
Comparative Advantage, tariffs, quotas, non-tariff barriers, currency exchange
10. Keynes's Aggregate Demand and Aggregate Supply
Fiscal policy (taxes and spending), policy implications/ineffectiveness
11. National Strategies
Unemployment, poverty, innovation
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