Basic Information

I reserve the right to make changes to this syllabus, including topics and due dates. Any changes will be announced as early as possible. Students are expected to read this outline in full; ignorance of its contents will not be accepted as justification after the first week of the semester.

Description

This course is the first part of a two-course sequence introducing macroeconomics — the study of the economy as a whole. It begins with the basic concepts, measurements, and institutions of an economic system, familiarising students with the core macroeconomic tools, theories, and policies, starting from the measurement of aggregate variables such as GDP, CPI, and the unemployment rate. It connects these ideas to everyday economic problems, then turns to the factors that drive productivity, employment, and output, and to the micro-founded theories behind household and firm decisions on consumption, investment, and money demand. Finally, it integrates the goods, money, and labour markets within the IS-LM and AS-AD frameworks to examine general equilibrium.

Teaching Philosophy

I teach macroeconomics as a connected set of models, not a list of topics: we build the goods, money, and labour markets and assemble them into one general-equilibrium framework. My emphasis is genuine understanding over memorisation — explaining the intuition, working through the mathematics, and applying models to real problems. Class time is active and the course is deliberately demanding; I ask you to protect your attention, take your own notes, and use AI to support your learning, never to replace your thinking.

Objectives

• To introduce macroeconomic issues and the numerical measures of macroeconomic aggregates.
• To analyze macroeconomic models of consumption, investment, employment, output, money, and inflation.
• To understand both short-run and long-run behaviour of the aggregate economy.
• To model frameworks for the determination of equilibrium output (integrating the goods, money, and labour markets).
• To examine and critically analyze macroeconomic theories and policies.

Course Outcomes

Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

1. Define key macroeconomic indicators (GDP, inflation, CPI, unemployment rate, growth rate).
2. Describe the theories of productivity, employment, and output relationships.
3. Apply theories of consumption, saving, and investment to economic scenarios.
4. Analyze and illustrate the concepts related to assets, money, and prices.
5. Evaluate economic conditions using the IS-LM / AS-AD general framework for macroeconomic analysis.

Lectures and Workload

Lectures. Slides are shared on MOODLE immediately after a module/topic is completed. Slides do not cover the complete course material — they indicate what is broadly intended to be covered; you are expected to attend the lectures and build your understanding by writing your own notes, then review the chapter-end questions and problems.

Workload. You are responsible for all assigned content in the textbook(s), even if we do not cover it explicitly in class. Classes will follow this outline, though I may occasionally deviate within a broader topic where I sense it would help you. There are no optional or supplementary readings for this course.

Topics Covered

Module 1: Introduction to Macroeconomics (8 hours)

Introduction; measuring the value of economic activity (GDP); measuring the cost of living (CPI); measuring joblessness (the unemployment rate).

Module 2: Productivity, Employment and Output (8 hours)

Production function and its properties — constant returns to scale, diminishing marginal products, total factor productivity; labour demand and labour supply; equilibrium; unemployment — structural, cyclical, frictional, and the natural rate; Okun’s Law.

Module 3: Consumption, Saving and Investment (8 hours)

Consumption, savings, and the factors affecting them; investment — user cost, desired capital stock, desired investment; goods-market equilibrium.

Module 4: Asset Market, Money and Prices (7 hours)

Money and its functions; portfolio allocation and demand for assets; demand for money as liquidity preference — an interest-elastic money-demand function of income and the interest rate, with velocity and the Quantity Theory of Money as the special case; asset-market equilibrium; money growth and inflation.

Module 5: IS-LM / AS-AD (14 hours)

Labour-market equilibrium; goods-market equilibrium; asset-market equilibrium; general equilibrium in IS-LM; price adjustment and attainment; aggregate demand and aggregate supply; AS-AD equilibrium; money neutrality.

Assessments and Assignments

Formative coursework. Formative assessment uses non-graded quizzes and Space Run activities on the Socrative platform. The goal is to monitor learning and provide ongoing feedback — for me to improve my teaching and for you to improve your learning.

Individual Assignment (10%). One individual assignment, to be completed on your own, testing the material covered up to that point.

Problem Set — Group (20%). A comprehensive group problem set covering analytical questions and mathematical problems involving algebra and basic calculus.

Midterm & End Term. The Mid-Term covers the first 3–4 chapters (MCQs, short-answer questions, and problems, mixing easy–medium and difficult items). The End Term is comprehensive, emphasises the second half of the semester, follows the same format, and is closed book.

Late submission & make-up. Deadlines are firm. Late submissions of the individual assignment or problem set lose 10% of the component’s marks per day and are not accepted more than three days after the deadline, except with a documented and valid reason discussed with me in advance where possible. There are no make-ups for the Midterm or End Term except under the Office of Examination’s regulations for genuine, documented emergencies.

Grading

This is a demanding course, and the grading rewards genuine understanding rather than rote effort. To keep standards comparable across sections, I reserve the right to adjust marks upwards to standardize the median score; marks are never adjusted down for this procedure.

Grading scale (minimum thresholds): O ≥ 90 · A+ ≥ 80 · A ≥ 70 · B+ ≥ 60 · B ≥ 50 · C ≥ 40 · P ≥ 35.

Grades are awarded on the basis of the given rubric and not on other factors such as class performance, attendance, appearance, gender, or ethnicity; low grades do not imply a rejection of the student, and hard work does not guarantee high marks.

Required and Supplemental Textbooks

Required. Macroeconomics, Abel, A., Bernanke, B. & Croushore, D., 11th ed., Pearson Education. A unified-model approach that balances classical and Keynesian perspectives and shows how different macroeconomic models connect.

Supplemental. Macroeconomics, N. Gregory Mankiw, 11th ed., Macmillan Learning. An accessible overview of modern macroeconomic theory and its use in analysing public policy.

Additional readings (journal articles, book chapters, and other resources) will be provided at the start of the course and updated on MOODLE throughout.

Sessions

Exam Week: December 14–19, 2026.

Holidays (No Class): Janmashtami (Sep 4, Sec A); Gandhi Jayanti (Oct 2, Sec A); Dussehra (Oct 20, Sec A); Diwali break (Nov 8–12); Guru Nanak Jayanti (Nov 24, Sec A).

Course Policies

Academic integrity & referencing. All work you submit must be your own. Plagiarism, collusion (the group problem set is the only collaborative assessment), fabrication of results, and contract cheating are serious violations handled under FLAME University’s academic-integrity regulations. Whenever you draw on a source — a textbook, article, dataset, or website — cite it clearly; if unsure what needs a citation, ask me before submitting.

Anti-cheating. Violations of the specified rules carry an automatic deduction of 5 points, with more severe infractions incurring a straight 0 for the component. The End Term follows the regulations set by the Office of Examination.

Use of Generative AI. This is a no-AI class for all graded work — AI tools may not be used to produce any part of your individual assignment, group problem set, or exam answers. You are, however, encouraged to use AI (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, NotebookLM) for your own learning — to explain concepts, test understanding, or explore ideas outside assessed work. They make confident mistakes, so verifying anything they tell you is your responsibility: treat AI output as a starting point to check against the textbook and lectures, never as an authoritative source.

Attendance. Lecture attendance, active participation, and handwritten notes are expected. A minimum of 80% attendance is required to be eligible for the End Term Examination, per FLAME University policy. Slides are posted online, but reading slides is not a substitute for being in class.

Email. Email is the best way to reach me; I aim to reply within 24 hours. Please include “ECON202/Section ?” in the subject line. For non-urgent questions useful to everyone, I periodically respond to the whole class as (anonymous) FAQs, and I encourage using the MOODLE forum.

Class participation. Speak up — to ask a question or make a comment. I will often ask questions and call on people, but the goal is to think out loud, not to “test” you; it is completely fine not to know an answer, and this form of participation does not affect your grade. Engagement and active participation are critical to a deeper understanding of the material and will have a positive impact on your final grade. When I or a classmate has the floor, please be attentive and keep any class-related side questions to a whisper, and be kind and respectful when addressing others.

Classroom etiquette. Please keep phones silenced and out of sight during class — divided attention measurably lowers comprehension, for you and for those around you, so this is about protecting everyone’s focus rather than policing behaviour. Laptops and tablets are used only when a specific task calls for them (see the electronics policy above). Arrive on time and engage respectfully; persistent disruption after a reminder may carry a small grade penalty, but the aim is simply a class where everyone can concentrate.

Electronics: no laptops or tablets during class. Devices are prohibited during class sessions. Handwritten note-takers significantly outperform laptop users on conceptual comprehension (Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014); a randomized trial in an introductory economics class found lower final-exam scores in laptop-permitted sections (Carter et al., 2017); in-class non-academic browsing predicts lower exam scores (Ravizza et al., 2017), and media multitasking is consistently linked to weaker recall and grades (Beland & Murphy, 2016; May & Elder, 2018). Students with documented disabilities or legitimate academic needs may request accommodations during office hours.

Accessibility & accommodations. I am committed to an inclusive classroom. Students with a disability or any condition affecting participation or assessment are entitled to reasonable accommodations — please contact the relevant FLAME University support office, and me in confidence, as early as possible. All requests are treated confidentially.

Student wellbeing. Your wellbeing matters more than any single grade. If personal, health, or financial difficulties are affecting your studies, please reach out — to me, or to FLAME University’s counselling and student-support services. Seeking help early makes a difference and will never count against you.

Classroom conduct and disciplinary procedures are governed by the FLAME University Handbook (pp. 28–29), which takes precedence over anything summarised here.

“The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.” — John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

“Economic knowledge is historically determined … what we know today about the economic system is not something we discovered this morning but is the sum of all our insights, discoveries and false starts in the past. Without Pigou there would be no Keynes; without Keynes no Friedman; without Friedman no Lucas; without Lucas no …” — Mark Blaug, epigraph to Snowdon & Vane, Modern Macroeconomics