Undergraduate Economics 2015-2016

This course is an introductory course in microeconomics where we study the decision making of individual actors (consumers, employees, firms, governments, etc.) in an economy.  Actors must make decisions about behaviours because they face scarce resources, but often they find that trading with other actors in markets can increase the wellbeing of all parties.  This course models and examines the nature of these interactions, highlighting when they work well and when they fail to increase wellbeing and what might be the solution to these failures. 

This course is an introductory course in macroeconomics  where we study the behaviour of the economy as a whole. Whereas microeconomics focuses on individual markets, macroeconomics addresses the “big issues” such as unemployment, inflation, economic growth, and financial crises. Macroeconomics is a lively subject, full of discussion and debate, as economists and policymakers take different views on macroeconomic issues, their causes and appropriate policy responses.  Issues such as: Is the economy growing? What causes unemployment and how can we reduce it? How can we avoid recessions? When is inflation a problem? Are banks lending too much?

This course builds on and is a natural extension of EC 1006. By examining in a more rigorous way concepts introduced in EC 1006 students will develop further their analytical skills and they will obtain a better understanding of consumers and producers behaviour, market structure as well as the effectiveness of economic policy.  The course is designed to appeal to all students interested in economics. This includes students who may wish not to enter into any further studies of economics, as well as students who may wish to continue studying economics at the honours level.

This course focuses on macroeconomic policy in a global economy. The first part builds an open-economy Keynesian model to investigate what determines the effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policies, and how exchange rate regimes and capital mobility impact on policy effectiveness. The second part investigates what determines the level of macroeconomic activity and its growth over time. The final part looks at what determines inflation and unemployment. This intermediate level course uses live lectures to develop your analytical skills evaluating economic policy in a rigorous and technical way to equip you with the skills needed for honours level study.

This two parted course aims to develop the students’ practical analytical skills and economic problem solving abilities. The first section deals with mathematics in an economic setting. It should enable the student to apply mathematical problem solving techniques to relevant economic issues. Material covered includes differentiation, unconstrained and constrained optimisation, integration and matrix algebra. The second section is dedicated to statistical methods in economics. It seeks to introduce the students to a variety of statistical concepts, relating among others to probability and distributions. It systematically develops hypotheses testing and regression analysis to enable analysis of real world data.

This course focuses on the countries of the developing world and tries to ascertain how low-income economies can be set on a track of sustained economic development in order to reduce poverty and achieve levels of wealth akin to developed economies. Development economics, like economics generally, is a subject where there is often much controversy: about how to define an issue, about the economic mechanisms which are at work and how they work, about the respective roles of the market and of the state, and much else. Consensuses may form – often for short periods of time – before fresh controversies break out. This means that there are not always “correct” answers or a single way of looking at an issue but the compensation is that development economics is a subject of lively debates.

 

This course seeks to explore the main debates in development economics. The majority of the lectures are devoted to a close examination of the evolution of arguments about some topic, with perhaps a particular focus upon a number of key contributions to the literature. This focus upon the important debates means that, inevitably, the course cannot be comprehensive in its coverage. The initial lecture of each section of the course seeks to set out an overview of the main issues but there is a limit to how much can be achieved in a single lecture. Consequently, you will have to put in the work yourself to fill in the gaps.

The course examines models of competition and collusion in industries. It also considers related issues of business strategy such as price discrimination and other sophisticated pricing methods, advertising, and product differentiation. The course illustrates the use of  economic analysis in assessing the performance of industries and possible roles for public policy. Other topics that may be discussed include the economics of research and development and strategic trade policy.  Game theory provides a framework for considering strategic interactions, and elements of  game theory are discussed in the course. The course is intended primarily for honours undergraduates in Economics.

This course focuses on the behaviour of employers and employees in response to the incentives of wages, prices, and profits. The employment relationship is one of the most important of our lives as we allocate a large proportion of our time to the labour market.  This course develops an understanding of how labour markets work, and will apply this to understand social and economic problems facing modern societies, such as the impact of welfare benefits and the usefulness of wage taxes and subsidies. We also introduce the key ideas of the economics of incentives, remuneration packages and labour contracts.

The course aims to provide students the basics of econometric theory and teach them a range of different estimation techniques that can be applied in practice when working with data. The first part of the course will focus mainly on teaching a working knowledge of basic methods and principles of econometric theory, while the second part will focus more on a sequence of specific problems involving the specification, estimation and interpretation of econometric models. Students participating in the course will have the opportunity to solve theory exercises and to estimate econometric models in a computer lab using actual data.

The purpose of this course is to expose students to the methodology of experimental economics and to give an overview of some of its uses in different areas of Economics, namely the functioning of markets, the effects of institutions on the decisions of economic agents, and to address public policy issues. The course is designed so as to allow the student hands-on experience of participating in experiments.

This course develops mathematical methods for analyzing economic decisions and equilibrium behaviour at an advanced undergraduate level. One of the goals is to help prepare students for postgraduate work in economics. A good understanding of the methods studied in EC2003 and EC3023 is essential, since the course builds on and extends the mathematical and analytical skills developed in these courses to examine in a more rigorous way several key areas in microeconomics such as individual consumer and firm choices, decision-making under uncertainty, and applications of game theory.

The dissertation presents students with the opportunity to apply their knowledge and research skills of Economics to an individual piece of research, focusing on a topic which has been chosen by the student and approved by the Dissertation coordinator and Dissertation supervisor. Over the course of the Dissertation, with guidance from the supervisor, the student will study a particular topic, conduct a literature review of relevant material, select appropriate theoretical and/or empirical methods to address the topic and write a final analysis in the form of the Dissertation of up to 10,000 words.

This course focuses on the design, implementation and evaluation of various aspects of economic policy. It aims to develop a deep understanding of how the techniques of applied economic policy evaluation both draw upon economic theory and are implemented in practice and to develop a critical appreciation of their associated strengths and weaknesses. The course will include a range of micro- and macro-policy applications to develop students’ skills in applying relevant techniques to real world problems.

This course examines the history of economic ideas and the evolution of the main schools of economic thought from the eighteenth century to the present day. It traces the development of modern economic thought and discusses the evolution of economic ideas through the important traditions. The course provides a bird's eye view of the main controversies in the discourse in economics and discusses their policy implications with regard to their contemporary relevance.

This course focuses on two key issues of economic policy debate, namely economic growth and monetary policy. The emphasis is on the recent developments in macroeconomic theory with particular reference to current problems. The first part of the course deals with economic growth, probably the primary issue of concern to economic policy makers today. The second part of the course focuses on issues related to the workings of a monetary economy. This course is an advanced, technical course, which aims to provide a sound base for those wishing to pursue postgraduate study or a career in economics.

The dissertation presents students with the opportunity to apply their knowledge and research skills of Economics to an individual piece of research, focusing on a topic which has been chosen by the student and approved by the Dissertation coordinator and Dissertation supervisor. Over the course of the Dissertation, with guidance from the supervisor, the student will study a particular topic, conduct a literature review of relevant material, select appropriate theoretical and/or empirical methods to address the topic and write a final analysis in the form of the Dissertation of up to 10,000 words.