ECON 102-01, Introduction to Economics, Fall 2008

Abstract

Economics is the study of how people make choices to satisfy their desires, in the face of limited resources, or “scarcity”. That is, the fact that we have limited resources— there is only so much water, so much clean air, so much oil—means that we must make choices about how we will use these resources. This course focuses on Macroeconomics, which studies how economic aggregates-- inflation, unemployment, Gross Domestic Product—behave, and how policy affects them. It is, in some ways, very different from the Microeconomics you’ve already studied. We will also touch on some issues in Finance and International Trade.