This course discusses how macroeconomic variables affect individuals’ personal, professional, and public activities and lays the foundation for the analysis of the mechanisms that drive macroeconomic variables. It starts by introducing the key macroeconomic variables and explaining how they are defined and measured to interpret macroeconomic data properly.
This course is part of the Managerial Economics and Business Analysis Specialization
Offered By
About this Course
Skills you will gain
- Economics
- Interest Rate
- Supply Chain
- Market (Economics)
Offered by
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a world leader in research, teaching and public engagement, distinguished by the breadth of its programs, broad academic excellence, and internationally renowned faculty and alumni. Illinois serves the world by creating knowledge, preparing students for lives of impact, and finding solutions to critical societal needs.
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Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
Course Orientation
You will become familiar with the course, your classmates, and our learning environment. The orientation will also help you obtain the technical skills required for the course.
Module 1: Key Macroeconomic Indicators and Their Measurement
What do macroeconomic indicators like GDP, the unemployment rate, and inflation really mean? How are they measured? How should the figures for such variables be interpreted?
Module 2: GDP Components, Twin Deficits, and Balance of Payments
Expenditure is often different from income for individuals, but for the economy as a whole, aggregate income is always identical to aggregate expenditure. This has important implications for the functioning of the macroeconomy and the way policies affect it. The income-expenditure identity is also fundamental to the ways various part of the economy with different processes interact with each other. For example, it sheds a lot of light on the formation of the trade deficit and its connection with budget deficit and private savings.
Module 3: The Foreign Exchange Market
How does the exchange rate affect the trade balance and foreign payments of an economy? How does the exchange rate interact with domestic and foreign prices to determine the competitiveness of an economy’s producers? Where does the exchange rate come from? Since currencies are assets that can be bought and resold at different times, their exchange rates must depend on expectations and futures markets. How do the spot and forward exchange rates interact with the expected rates of future dates?
Module 4: Money, Interest Rate, and the Exchange Rate
The interest rate determines the exchange rate, the cost of capital, and the opportunity cost of using money. How is the interest rate determined? What factors drive the supply and demand for money? What constitutes money? What role do banks play in the monetary system? How do central banks influence the money market and the interest rate?
Reviews
- 5 stars66.08%
- 4 stars18.47%
- 3 stars7.48%
- 2 stars3.27%
- 1 star4.67%
TOP REVIEWS FROM COUNTRY LEVEL ECONOMICS: MACROECONOMIC VARIABLES AND MARKETS
The course is quite enlightening, gained invaluable experience in understanding and interpreting a countries economic status
Concise yet very helpful. The reading material is well prepared. After this course, I can fully understand all the financial news.
Me gustó mucho. Lo encontré desafiante y sobre todo muy entretenido. Éste tipo de cursos (en general todo el programa especializado de 'Managerial Economics') valen la pena para invertir tiempo.
I have a chance to review most fundamental knowledge of macroeconomics. Thanks Professor and Team for the course.
About the Managerial Economics and Business Analysis Specialization
In order to effectively manage and operate a business, managers and leaders need to understand the market characteristics and economic environment in which they operate. In this specialization, you will build a solid understanding of the operation of markets and the macro-economic environment with real-world examples. You will be able to identify firm and country-level economic factors that impact business decisions, develop an analytical framework using statistical tools, and apply economic theory and data in the analysis of business environment and trends to make effective business decisions.
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