Economic Theory

2022/2023

Учебный год

ENG

Обучение ведется на английском языке

7

Кредиты

Кто читает:

Департамент экономики

Статус:

Курс по выбору

Когда читается:

1-й курс, 3, 4 модуль

Преподаватель

Розмаинский Иван Вадимович

Course Syllabus

Abstract

The course “Economic Theory” is aimed at the freshmen of the undergraduate programme in Political Science & World Politics with an introductory background in economics. Lectures cover all the topics from both micro- and macroeconomics. The first part includes demand and supply analysis, consumer behavior conceptions, costs taxonomy and supply functions, firm behavior under various market organizations such as perfect competition, oligopoly, monopolistic competition, and monopoly. In addition, the micro- part includes policy-related topics such as externalities, public goods and asymmetric information. The second part includes topics of economic growth and business cycles, unemployment and inflation, monetary and fiscal policies, exchange rates and international trade. All the topics are considered from the perspective of their relevance for a potential agenda for policy makers. While lectures provide students with the theory, some technical details are left for self-study of students with the use of the presentations and literature. Seminars involve solving applied tasks with the use of simulated and real data. Some seminars may take the form of the lectures’ continuation or discussion of purely theoretical issues.

Learning Objectives

• All the topics are considered from the perspective of their relevance for a potential agenda for policy makers.

Expected Learning Outcomes

• Demonstrates and in-depth knowledge and critical understanding fundamentals of economic theory in its main parts of micro- and macroeconomics
• Recognizes the reciprocal relationship between economic theory and empirical evidence.
• Utilizes received skills to solve the numerical exercises based on the famous models from both micro- and macroeconomics like the demand and supply model, the Keynesian cross model, etc
• Applies received knowledge and understanding of economic theory for evaluation of different types of economic policy dealing with the real economic problems

Course Contents

• Different economic systems
• Demand and supply analysis
• Market equilibrium and market disequilibrium
• Market failures and microeconomic policy of the government
• Consumer behavior
• Costs and production
• Firms under perfect competition
• Firms under imperfect competition
• GDP and other macroeconomic indicators
• Determination of GDP: the AD-AS model
• Business cycles
• Unemployment and inflation
• The Keynesian cross model and fiscal policy
• Money, banking and monetary policy
• Open-economy macroeconomics
• Economic growth

Assessment Elements

• Students’ work in class
  20% comes from the students’ work in class during the DGs (which, of course, includes the assessment of their quantitative and qualitative contribution to the discussions, etc.).
• Test
  Students should take two tests which will contain open questions and quantitative problems. Each test adds 20%.
• Exam
  The exam grade is a blocking grade. If you fail the exam, you fail the class and have to retake it during the retake session. The both exam and tests scores are the sums of the points received for each item on the exam. In the process of making quantitative problems - it is necessary to make relevant calculations; if they are done incompletely or incorrectly, the points are reduced. In dealing with open questions, you need to build a chain of cause-and-effect relationships; the points are reduced if such a chain is again incomplete or incorrect.

Interim Assessment

• 2022/2023 4th module
  0.4 * Exam + 0.2 * Students’ work in class + 0.2 * Test

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• Economics, Samuelson, P., 1992

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• Paul L. Heyne, Peter J. Boettke, & David L. Prychitko. (2013). The Economic Way of Thinking: Pearson New International Edition. Pearson.