Department of Economics & International Development, Unit Catalogue 2006/07

EC10007 Introductory macroeconomics

Credits: 6

Level: Certificate

Semester: 2

Assessment: CW 40%, EX 60%

Requisites:

Aims: The Unit is designed to provide an introduction to the methods of macroeconomic analysis, including the use of simple macroeconomic models and their application in a UK policy context. Students should gain an ability to derive conclusions from simple economic models and evaluate their realism and usefulness in policy making.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the course unit students should be able to understand and apply basic macroeconomic principles to the economic decisions of the policy-maker. They should be able to use these principles to both describe and appraise these decisions as well as to understand how macroeconomic problems arise. They should be competent in the verbal, diagrammatic and basic mathematical concepts used in introductory macroeconomics, providing a suitable platform for the more advanced study of this subject in future years.Additional provision is made for those students without A Level Economics.
Skills:
Basic grounding in macro-economics.
Content:
The circular flow of income and expenditure; national income accounting; aggregate demand and supply; the components and determinants of private and public sector aggregate expenditure in closed and open economies; output and the price level in the short- and long-run; monetary and fiscal policy; inflation and unemployment; the balance of payments and exchange rates; economic growth, economic cycles; macroeconomic modelling.
Key text:
* Richard G. Lipsey and K. Alec Chrystal An Introduction to Positive Economics
Supplementary texts:
* M.J. Artis (ed) The UK Economy: a Manual of Applied Economics
* Alan Griffiths and Stuart Wall Applied Economics: An Introductory Course
Additional material: lecture notes are in the Library, including additional reading material and also on the Web. The student is also referred to the IFS web page.

University | Catalogues for 2006/07