To achieve the grade 12, students
should meet the following learning objectives with no or only minor
mistakes or errors: At the end of the course, the students should
be able to account for:
- The main components of the national income accounts and
aggregate statistics – what they measure and how they are
related.
- The determinants of prices, output, unemployment, interest
rates and growth in the long run.
- The role of money, how it is created and controlled, and what
determines its supply and demand.
- The consequences of short-run adjustments where prices and
wages move slowly, and the effects of fiscal and monetary policy
(Keynesian aggregate demand model and the IS-LM model).
- The causes of unemployment and its relation to inflation in the
short and long run (the Phillips curve).
- Basic macroeconomic phenomena in open economies and how the
existence of trade affects macroeconomic policy.
- The functioning of international capital and foreign exchange
markets, how they determine exchange rates in the short run, and
how they interact with domestic money markets.
- Determinants of exchange rates, prices, and interest rates in
the long run (purchase power parity theory, Fisher effect)
- The dynamics of exchange rate markets and exchange rate
overshooting.
- Exchange rate regimes and the role of central banking and
international monetary cooperation.
- How exchange rate regimes affect the scope for domestic
macroeconomic policy.
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Macroeconomics introduces students to economic issues and
mainstream theories related to the entire national economy as well
as the world economy. The course introduces the system of national
income accounts and national statistics and its use in terms of
measuring the overall material standard of living, price levels,
inflation, unemployment, etc. Students will learn how to look at
how these entities are determined in the long run by capital
investment, growth and innovation, and then look at the notion of
money, how money is created and controlled by the Central Bank, and
how the supply of money influences price levels in the long run.
Students will be asked to consider the situation where prices and
wages are stable, how the result may cause overheating or
recessions, and how fiscal policy (government expenditure and
taxes) and monetary policy (Central Bank regulation of the money
market) can be used to alleviate this situation. Another subject is
the causes of unemployment and the phenomenon itself and how it
relates to the movement of prices and wages, after which focus will
shift to open economies where goods, people, and capital are traded
with other countries, and how the nature of macroeconomic policy
changes in an open economy. From this, focus again shifts to the
functioning of international capital and foreign exchange markets,
and how they relate exchange rates to domestic financial markets.
The long-run determinants of exchange rates, inflation and interest
rates between different countries are considered, and the course is
concluded with issues and insights related to international
monetary cooperation and the particular issues raised by the needs
of less developed countries.
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