Economics Courses

Core BA requirements

Economics majors earning a bachelor of arts degree must complete all of the following core requirements. 

M&E 1210: Microeconomic Analysis
Goals: To introduce students to theory relating to the economic decisions made by individual consumers and firms.
Content: Analysis of demand, supply, and markets. Topics include consumer behavior, firm operation in product and factor markets, and industry structure.

M&E 1220: Macroeconomic Analysis
Goals: To acquaint students with the structural framework and principles involved in the determination of the level of aggregate economic activity: national income, output, employment, and price levels.
Content: Analysis of problems of unemployment, inflation, economic growth, and related government policy.

M&E 1230: Statistics
Goals: To acquaint students with major parametric and non-parametric statistical techniques.
Content: Data organization, simple probability, and sampling distributions; estimation and hypothesis testing; regression and correlation; time series; selected non-parametric tests.
Prerequisites: None, though a basic understanding of algebra is expected. Credit will not be given for both M&E 1230 and PSY 1340.

M&E 3570: Intermediate Microeconomics
Goals: To understand and apply methods used in economics to analyze the behavior of prices and the market mechanism.
Content: Allocation decisions of individual consumers and firms as well as the interaction of consumers and firms in single markets.
Taught: Annually.
Prerequisites: M&E 1210, 1220, 1230, and Math 1170 or Math 1162, or consent of the instructor.

M&E 3580: Intermediate Macroeconomics
Goals: To understand and apply methods used in economics to analyze the gross national product, inflation, employment levels, and economic growth.
Content: The course explores theories that explain the behavior of GNP and related variables. Keynesian, monetarist, and other models are studied.
Taught: Annually.
Prerequisites: M&E 1210, 1220, 1230, and Math 1170 or Math 1162, or consent of the instructor.

M&E 5820: Econometrics
Goals: To enable students to understand and use economic indicators, time series, and regression analysis in model building and forecasting.
Content: Estimating model parameters, hypothesis testing, and interpreting economic data.
Prerequisites: M&E 1210, 1220, 1230, 3570 or 3580, and Math 1170 or Math 1162, or consent of the instructor.

M&E 5860: Senior Seminar Economics
Goals: To develop and test economic models through in-depth, independent research in theoretical and applied economics.
Content: Research methodology and recent analytical and theoretical approaches to questions on topics such as the environment, health care, industrial organization, international economics, labor, money and banking, regional and urban economics, and welfare economics. Students choose a research topic, review the literature, construct a theoretical model, and collect and analyze data for final presentations.
Prerequisites: M&E 3570, 3580, and 5820, or consent of the instructor.
         

Economics electives

In addition to the core courses required above, economics majors must choose at least three additional economics electives.

M&E 3510: Labor Economics
Goals: To provide students a well-balanced presentation of models of labor economics, applications, policies, and major analytic areas within labor economics.
Content: Labor market analysis, labor unions and collective bargaining, government and the labor market, theories of labor market discrimination, earnings, income and wage differentials, and race and gender issues of the labor market.
Prerequisites: M&E 1210, 1220, and 1230, or consent of the instructor.

M&E 3520: Money, Banking, and the Financial System
Goals: Analysis, within the economy, of money, interest rates, banks, and other financial institutions.
Content: Examines goals, strategies, and analytical decision-making by banks, central banks, and other financial institutions.
Prerequisites: M&E 1210, 1220, and 1230, or consent of the instructor.

M&E 3530: Economics of Public Finance
Goals: To understand the effect of governmental expenditure and taxation policies on a society’s economy and citizens.
Content: The basis for government economic activity. Employs equity and efficiency criteria to analyze government expenditure and taxation programs.
Prerequisites: M&E 1210, 1220, 1230, and Math 1170 or Math 1162, or consent of the instructor.

M&E 3700: International Economic Development
Goals: To gain understanding of the problems and issues of economic development and to examine and appraise the major prevailing approaches to those problems.
Content: Global Third World as well as high-income market economy perspectives; concepts of growth and development; major contemporary approaches; diversity among the Third World countries; dualism; cultural factors; population, labor, migration and education; poverty and inequality; strategies for investment and structural transformations; international trade, investment and development; planning, control, and macroeconomic policies.
Prerequisites: M&E 1210, 1220, 1230, and Math 1170 or Math 1162, or consent of the instructor.

M&E 3750: International Trade and Finance
Goals: To acquaint students with the evolving patterns of trade and investments in the global economic environment and with the major issues confronting national and international institutions of trade and finance.
Content: Topics covered include theories of foreign trade with perfect and imperfect competition. Trade policy issues, protectionism, and U.S. trade policies and its institutional settings. The effects of growth and factor mobility on trade. Balance of payments, trade deficit, and domestic economic issues. Multinational enterprises, economic integration, and new international economic cooperation. Trade and development.
Prerequisites: M&E 1210, 1220, 1230, and Math 1170 or Math 1162, or consent of the instructor.

M&E 5810: Managerial Economics
Goals: To introduce students to applications of microeconomic theory and methodology and develop mathematical problem solving skills as they apply to business firm behavior.
Content: microeconomic applications: demand analysis, production and cost analyses, pricing, risk analysis, forecasting, linear programming, constrained and unconstrained optimization techniques.
Prerequisites: M&E 1210, 1220, 1230, and Math 1170 or Math 1162, or consent of the instructor.

M&E 5980: Topics Course (selective)