Economics is the study of how society deals with the problem of allocating scarce resources across competing uses. Macroeconomics is dealing this issue form a macro perspective. In this course you will learn the basic macroeconomics principles that economists use to address the following questions: What is and what affects the economy’s standard of living and its cost of living? What creates real economic fluctuations and what can be done (fiscal & monetary policy) to correct them? and so on.
First, we will briefly review how individuals make decisions in the economy (i.e. households, firms, and government). Second, we will investigate the consequences of these decisions on the aggregate macroeconomic variables and social welfare and to study how government responds to these consequences. Finally, several projects, which provide you a chance to apply the macroeconomic principles to real-world policy questions, will be assigned to several groups of students and each group (consisted of 4-5 students) is required to make a 45-minute presentation.
(For the Chinese introduction of this course, please watch a video of course introduction under the Class Video column.)