Economics addresses problems and issues at every level of business, government and community. This course investigates both microeconomic and macroeconomic principles. The microeconomic component explores supply and demand; elasticity; the operation of markets; costs and production; perfect competition & monopoly; monopolistic competition & oligopoly; wages, the distribution of income & inequality; and market failure and government policy. The analysis of macroeconomics includes the determination of economic activity, money and the financial system; inflation and unemployment; the balance of payments and exchange rates; and macroeconomic policy.
A problem oriented learning approach will be taken in tutorials developing a mastery of concepts and associated economic analysis applied to real world issues.
|Faculty||Faculty of Business and Law|
|School||Newcastle Business School|
Semester 1 - 2016
(Sydney Elizabeth Street)
Semester 2 - 2016 (Sydney Elizabeth Street)
On successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
The first half of the course provides students with an understanding of basic microeconomic principles, including the concept of a market and theories of production and exchange. The decision making behaviour of firms, with respect to pricing and resource allocation, under different market structures is examined. The course also explores the determination of wages, factors influencing the distribution of income & inequality and finally market failure and the role for government policy.
The remainder of the course introduces students to macroeconomic principles and concepts. Students will develop an understanding of the fundamental difference between microeconomic and macroeconomic thinking, the circular flow of income, national income accounting, the determinants of expenditure, labour underutilisation, the role of money, banking and finance, theories of inflation and unemployment and contemporary macroeconomic policy. The course is designed to provide students with analytical tools that can be applied to real world problems.
The structure and assessment of the course is designed to promote active student learning, so that students are not provided with simple answers to problems which can be readily memorised. Students are expected to gain a mastery of the concepts and associated economic analysis. In tutorials the real world relevance of these concepts will be demonstrated by their application to a series of applied, often policy oriented issues. Student groups are expected to research the applied problems by drawing on the reference material, when it is provided, but also through undertaking web based searches. A problem oriented learning approach (POL) will be taken in tutorials.
|Timetable||2016 Course Timetables for PACC6007|