Learn how the economic decisions you and others make impact what you pay for things and how much you get paid, in this credit-eligible course. The macroeconomy is the sum of all our productive efforts, spending, and income. Economic outcomes are the result of our complex interactions with other people, businesses, the government, as well as with people and businesses globally. In this economics course, you will learn the basic stylized framework that economists use to think about, account for, measure and explain these complex interactions and outcomes.
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In the first half of the course, we consider how households decide how much to work and how to spend and save money. We will also look at how businesses make economic decisions such as how many workers to hire and how many machines and buildings to use to produce their products.
In the second half of the course, we consider how different policies can potentially enhance or distort market outcomes by offsetting, alleviating, or amplifying these inefficiencies. Our focus will be on five aspects of economic policy:
- labor market policies and unemployment
- R&D and innovation policies
- fiscal policies and taxation
- monetary policy and inflation
- free-trade policies
What you'll learn
- Basic principles of the theory of household and business decisions
- How these decisions drive macroeconomic outcomes, namely growth and fluctuations
- The difference in macroeconomic outcomes over time and across countries
- Which data points are used to track U.S. macroeconomic outcomes
- How economic policies can affect growth and fluctuations
