Econ 105 Principles

Congratulations to my Econ 105 students! The course is now retired, and we have closed a chapter in the university's history.

Storytelling: Several years ago, the Business school pushed for a combined one-semester introductory economics course. The idea was to save business students a bit of time with general education requirements and get them into the Business curriculum slightly faster. Through some extraordinary persuasive efforts, they managed to get the entire university to switch to this format, eliminating Econ 101 and Econ 102 (Micro and Macro). To replace those three-hour courses, the four-hour Econ 105 was born: a one-semester crash course based on Mankiw's ten principles. This lasted for many years until someone else lobbied successfully to revert to the old format.

I had the privilege of teaching the very last full-semester section of this course. Enrollment ballooned to nearly 250 students as optimizers tried to fulfill their prerequisites in one semester, rather than two.

Course Description:

Economics 105: Principles of Economics. This course is a combined introduction to microeconomics and macroeconomics.

Course Objectives:

Economics provides many quantitative frameworks useful for explaining how individuals’ behaviors collectively determine the wellbeing of society. In this course, you will be introduced to microeconomic and macroeconomic concepts with attention to the important connections between them.

ECO 105 covers supply and demand in product and resource markets, international trade, determination of GDP, employment and unemployment, inflation and money, and economic growth. This course cannot be taken for credit if you have taken ECO 101 and ECO 102.

Access the syllabus here.