ISL 244E - Macroeconomics

Course Objectives

This course is a course in which macroeconomic issues such as the relationship between macroeconomic variables such as unemployment, inflation, GDP, short and medium term economic balance analysis, exchange rates and economic balance will be explained at an intermediate level.

Course Description

This course is designed as a follow-up to the first-semester course titled Microeconomics, which focused on the study of particular product, labor and capital markets through an investigation of the behavior of economic agents of society, namely individuals as consumers and workers, and firms/businesses as producers. This course will follow up on these micro foundations to explore the other major field of economics: Macroeconomics. The aim will be to develop an understanding of the aggregate economic variables such as national income, growth, unemployment, inflation, savings, investment, productivity and economic fluctuations. We look at how these macro variables are defined and measured; identify the basic observed trends in related macroeconomic data; explore their causes and effects. The lectures will develop an analytical framework showing how these macroeconomic variables relate to one another and their relevance to economic policy making. The latter half of the course will focus on the implications of an open economy context for these macroeconomic phenomena, through exploration of international trade, capital flows, exchange rates, balance of payments and economic fluctuations in the context of a globalized economy.