ECON 101
ECONOMIC ISSUES

Course Title: Economic Issues
Class Day/Time: 101.01/Times TBD
Instructor: Professor Carbaugh
Office: Shaw-Smyser 428
Telephone: 963 - 1014
Email: carbaugh@cwu.edu
Office Hours: To be announced

COURSE The objective of this course is to teach basic general education level Micro and Macro-economic concepts that will help the student understand how the American economic system operates. Both strengths and weaknesses of the system will be discussed. The same concepts used to analyze the functioning of our economic system will provide the basis for analyzing personal, business, and government decisions.

COURSE OUTCOMES
   The Economic Issues course will encourage you to:

Develop (elementary) critical thought processes and skills.
Use basic graphic and quantitative analyses.
Develop the economic concepts necessary to analyze "real-world" issues.

Students will be responsible for learning on their own from the text, study guide and lecture notes. Study groups are usually very useful for such courses. Memorizing passages from the book will prove absolutely fruitless. The recommended learning strategy is to spend most of your time solving problems like those in the text, and study guide.

EXAMINATIONS

There are four exams. We will decide on the date and time of this later. The exams, which are comprehensive, will each account for 25 percent of the grade. In addition to the four exams there will be quizzes. The lowest 25 percent of the score earned in the four exams may be substituted with the average score earned on ALL the quizzes.

MAKE-UP EXAMS

Make-up exams will be given only under the most compelling circumstances and I must be notified well before the scheduled date.

1. Robert J. Carbaugh, Contemporary Economics, South-Western, 2001
2. Koushik Ghosh, Study Guide to Contemporary Economics, South-Western,   2001
3. Wall Street Journal (optional)

Core Readings in Text Topics

Ch. 1 Scarcity and Choice
Ch. 2 Market Transactions: Demand and Supply Analysis
Ch. 3 Demand and Supply Applications
Ch. 4 Production and the Costs of Production
Ch. 5 Competition and Monopoly: Virtues and Vices
Ch. 10 Gross Domestic Product and Economic Growth
Ch. 11 The Business Cycle, Unemployment, and Inflation
Ch. 12 Macroeconomic Instability: Aggregate demand and Aggregate Supply
Ch. 13 Fiscal Policy and the Federal Budget
Ch. 14 Money and the Banking System
Ch. 15 The Federal Reserve and Monetary Policy

SELECTED TOPICS
Ch. 6 Imperfect Competition
Ch. 7 Government and Markets
Ch. 8 Labor Markets
Ch. 9 The Mixed Economy of the United States
Ch. 16 The United States and the Global Economy