ECO-102
(3 credits)
This course is a part of:
Paralegal Associate's Degree Program
This is an introductory course in Macroeconomics for students who have no prior background in Economics. The approach used will be mostly non-quantitative, but graphical analysis will be emphasized. Students will learn basic macroeconomic concepts on the aggregate demand and aggregate supply of outputs in the general economy, economic growth and unemployment, and the role of money and banking institutions in affecting the economy’s price level and inflation. Students will also study various fiscal and monetary policies used by the government to stabilize economic fluctuations. The analytical tools learnt in this course will be useful in understanding and examining many real world economic problems affecting the general economy. This course assumes that students have a working knowledge of High School Algebra.
Course Objectives
At the completion of this course, the student will have acquired knowledge and understanding of:
- Major macroeconomic issues: economic growth, unemployment and inflation.
- Definition of GDP and its measurement, international comparisons of economic growth.
- Unemployment and its changes over the business cycle, constructing the consumer price index (CPI) and its relation to inflation.
- Components of the aggregate demand and aggregate supply, and the effects of their fluctuations on the macroeconomic equilibrium.
- The Classical Model: explaining the features of the general economy at full employment.
- The causes of economic growth, the measurement of economic growth.
- Growth theories – classical growth theory, neoclassical growth theory, new growth theory.
- The role of money and banking institutions, the role of the Federal Reserve in controlling money supply.
- The demand for money, interest rate determination, the quantity theory of money.
- The causes of inflation – demand-pull and cost-push theories, the effects of inflation.
- The Phillips curve – the relation between inflation and unemployment in the short run and long run.
- Fiscal Policy – the federal budget, the effects of the income tax.
- Fiscal Policy – the effects of tax on savings and investments, generational effects of fiscal policy.
- Monetary Policy – the various monetary instruments that the Fed uses to stabilize the price level.
- Monetary Policy – the credibility of monetary policy, the McCallum Rule and the Taylor Rule.