Learning Goals

Knowledge of Economic Concepts, Theories and Reasoning

Students should have an understanding of how economics can be used to explain and interpret:

• the behavior of agents (for example, firms and households) and the markets or settings in which they interact, and
• the structure and performance of national and global economies. 

Students should also be able to evaluate the structure, internal consistency and logic of economic models and the role of assumptions in economic arguments.  This understanding is required for the discipline's two broad categories of concepts, theories and reasoning--microeconomics and macroeconomics.

Intellectual and Practical Skills

Critical Reasoning

Students should be able to apply economic analysis to evaluate everyday problems and policy proposals and to assess the assumptions, reasoning and evidence contained in an economic argument.

Quantitative Analysis

Students should grasp the mathematical logic of standard macroeconomic and microeconomic models.

Students should know how to use empirical evidence to evaluate an economic argument (including the collection of relevant data for empirical analysis, statistical analysis, and interpretation of the results of the analysis) and how to understand empirical analyses of others.

Communication

Students should be able to communicate effectively in written, spoken, graphical, and quantitative form about specific economic issues.

Citizenship

Students should include an economic way of thinking in their understanding of current events.

Students should know how to acquire information from databases of news and periodicals and from primary and secondary data sources.