What is ECON 103 all about?
To make informed decisions about economic activities in which we engage, we must have clear ideas how major economic variables- economy-wide income, unemployment, inflation, interest rate, and exchange rate-affect our personal and business activities. We must also understand what factors drive those variables. The goal of this course is to enable the students to make basic assessments of the global economic environment in which they will be living and working.
We examine the major economic variables and discuss the ways in which economists go about to study them systematically. We consider how differences in government policies and political, social, and cultural rules and norms explain the substantial differences in economic performance across countries and over time. We also emphasize the central role played by the global connections among economies. Learning in the course is facilitated through lectures, class discussions, frequent in-class quizzes, exams, and various assignments.