Course details

Course details for the first two years of the undergraduate degree in Economics.

Please find below a short description of core courses for the first two years of the undergraduate degree in Economics. For more information on these and other courses, please refer to the Degree Regulations & Programmes of Study (DRPS).

Year one

Economics 1

This course focuses on microeconomics - the study of the effect of incentives on individual behaviour.

The first semester focuses on developing and using models of supply and demand in microeconomic (individual market) contexts, consumer theory and the determinants of demand, strategic interaction and topics in behavioural economics.

The second semester looks at the theory of the firm and market structure, factor markets, externalities, the role of the government and general equilibrium, with applications to monopoly and oligopoly, stock markets, property rights and public goods.

Relevant mathematical techniques are developed and applied to the economic contexts as an integral part of the course.

Year two

Economics 2

This course focuses on macroeconomics - the study of economy-wide phenomena.

Semester one explores national income accounting, the distribution of income, aggregate consumption and investment expenditures, economic growth, money and inflation; labour markets and unemployment, economic fluctuations and stabilisation policy.

The second semester looks at macroeconomics and includes topics such as monetary and fiscal policy, the open economy, exchange rate systems and monetary union, business cycles, economic policy and financial markets.

You will develop relevant mathematical techniques and apply them to economic contexts.

Statistical Methods for Economics

The course is intended as an introduction to probability theory and statistics for economists and other social science students.

The topics covered will include: Basic concepts, sample spaces, events, probabilities; Conditioning and independence, Bayes' formula; Discrete random variables, expectation, variance, mean, independence; Continuous random variables, distributions and densities; Covariance, correlation, central limit theorem; Summary statistics; Sampling distributions; Hypothesis testing; Interval estimation; ANOVA, simple linear regression, multiple regression, and logistic regression.

The use of Excel for statistical analysis will be supported through material available on the course website.