The following classes may be taken to fulfill the economics elective requirement of the Economics major or Business Economics major.
Please note: Check each semester's schedule for availability of a class. Not every class will be offered every semester. Check with the instructor for pre-requisities or permission to waive pre-requisites. Check the University catalog for more complete information.
Application of economic theory to current economic problems with emphasis on public policy implications. Topics vary.
Applies scientific research on human and social cognitive and emotional patterns to better understand economic decisions and how they affect market prices, returns and the allocation of resources. The fields are primarily concerned with the rationality, or lack thereof, of economic agents.
Economic analysis of such environmental matters as air, water, and noise pollution, population growth, and land use. Emphasis placed on use of economic theory and empirical research in evaluating environmental policies.
Explores the economic aspects involved in the extraction and utilization of both renewable and nonrenewable natural resources. Topics include the economics of oil and mineral extraction, groundwater use, agricultural practices, forestry, and fisheries. Allocation of property rights and economic benefits and costs of natural resource use are also examined.
Demand for medical care, supply behavior of profit and nonprofit agencies, market structure, adverse selection, public and private health insurance. Additional topics, which may vary.
Major topics are property, contracts, and torts. Class time is divided between economic analysis of these topics in the abstract and actual legal cases that involve these topics.
Demand for labor, supply of labor, household production, compensating wage differentials, education and training, discrimination, unions, and unemployment.
Investigation of the decisions individuals and families make regarding education, marriage, fertility, labor supply, and child care, as well as the effects of public policy on these decisions.
Market structures, market conduct, and social performance of industries. Emphasis upon firms' strategic behavior in price and nonprice competition. Topics include oligopolistic pricing, strategic entry deterrence, location strategies, product quality, advertising, and research and development. Economic welfare implications of firms' behavior examined.
Introduction to the behavior of firms that operate in imperfectly competitive markets and the antitrust laws that regulate this behavior.
Applies economic theory to analyzing public policy issues regarding energy production and use--including such topics as price controls, import dependency, conservation, supply outlook, and industry concentration.
Why does the government regulate business? Reasons include the inefficiencies of market power, considerations of fairness, excessive competition, natural monopoly, externalities, and reducing transactions costs.
International trade patterns, theories of absolute and comparative advantage, classical and modern trade theory, tariffs, quotas, nontariff barriers, preferential trading arrangements.
How exchange rates are determined, fixed vs. flexible rates, government intervention, fiscal and monetary policy in open economy, transmission of inflation and unemployment among nations, international capital movements, covered interest arbitrage, forward exchange, Eurocurrency markets.
In a free economy, income earners' savings flow directly and through intermediaries to investors who use the proceeds to increase capital, the engine of growth. Intermediaries such as banks, brokers, and exchanges, create instruments such as equities, bonds, mutual fund shares, and their derivatives, which trade in secondary markets. This course examines the interrelationships between institutions, instruments, participants, strategies, and markets.
This course examines classic and modern theories of economic development and growth focusing on applications to the developing world. Special topics may include debt, trade, reform, foreign investment, education, health, the role of the state, and international aid.
Patterns of agricultural development: technological and demographic changes in agriculture; socioeconomic problems; marketing arrangements; case studies of specific agricultural development projects.
Economic factors in development of U.S., including historical growth of economic institutions such as banking, manufacturing, labor unions, and agriculture, from colonial times to present.
Economic growth of developed countries. Focus on industrial revolutions in Great Britain, France, Germany, and the former Soviet Union. Historical experience of these countries related to various theories of economic change.
Role of money and banking system in determination of national income and output. Monetary theory and policy emphasized.
Application of cost-benefit analysis, including pricing of non-market costs and benefits. Applications to developing countries, the environment and other project evaluation.
Uses real-life small and large data sets and applys software procedures to conduct statistical and finacial analysis of economic and business data. Interpretation of statistical output of estimated functions and written reports for rational decision-making by using business and economic analysis. Statistical packages used may vary.
Emphasis on monetary economics. Money demand and supply theory and policies for minimizing cyclical fluctuations in economic activity.
Regional economics is concerned with analytical approaches to problems that are specifically urban, rural, or regional. Topics in regional science include, but are not limited to location theory or spatial economics, location modeling, transportation, migration analysis, land use and urban development, interindustry analysis, environmental and ecological analysis, resource management, urban and regional policy analysis, geographical information systems, and spatial data analysis.
Survey of economic approach to analyzing public policy issues. Uses concepts of welfare economics, public choice economics, and cost-benefit analysis, as applied to sample of policy subjects.
Role played by government as user of economic resources and redistributor of incomes. Some questions explored: need for government's entry into economy, optimal size of government, selection of tax and expenditures schemes, and effects of government economic activity on private sector.
Contracts, trading, institutions, and strategies, including hedging and speculation.
Economic characteristics of African societies as traditional economies and in process of modernization.
Economics of Latin American countries, prospects for economic development of the region, nature and origin of institutional obstacles to economic change. Economic heritage of colonial period and subsequent evolution of economic institutions, resources of the area and utilization, and trends in economic activity and policy in post-WWII period.
Introduction to the economics of the modern Chinese economy.
Economics of Korea, Japan and SouthEast Asia, including trade, exchange rates and industrial policies.