Summer Online Courses

Economics 201, Introduction to Microeconomics. The pedagogical approach in Introduction to Microeconomics online is aid learning by providing many different but mutually reinforcing learning materials. In that spirit, the course authors offer a multifaceted approach to learning that includes a textbook, other additional readings, online video streaming lectures, individualized problem sets, practice quizzes, and an asynchronous discussion forum.

Online Economics 201, has been completed successfully by thousands of MSU students over its decade-long existence. The course, which is required for many academic majors, covers the important topics in modern microeconomics, including the functioning of markets, and the determination of output, prices, and costs. Great emphasis is placed on comparing and contrasting competitive and monopoly models of production and distribution, and their consequences for social welfare. Students will explore the reasons for and consequences of international trade, beginning with the principle of comparative advantage, and including analysis of the social gains from trade. Finally, the course includes the analysis of market failure, with examples taken from externalities (neighborhood effects), common property resources, as well as a series of information failures.

Exam Policy

All exams will be administered via D2L using a lockdown browser and remote proctoring service. Students must have access to a webcam and microphone. The system is compatible with Windows (10, 8, 7), Mac (MacOS 10.15 to 10.12, OS X 10.11, OSX 10.10), and iPad (iOS 11.0+). The system is not compatible with Chromebooks. Alternate arrangements must be approved by the instructor within the first week of the course.

The severe economic downturn that began in 2008 has increased interest in economy-wide assessment of economic activity.  The persistent high levels of unemployment and high national debt levels have challenged policy makers to implement workable solutions.  Will the economy experience deflation, or falling price levels, as a result, or will high growth rates of monetary measures lead to inflation rate increases?

Economics 202 online provides a foundation for economic analysis along with a framework with which national economic measures can be understood.  The financial markets are examined both from a personal portfolio management perspective and from the viewpoint of not only how national asset prices are determined, including nominal and real interest rates, stock market prices, and currency exchange rates, but also from the view of how the resulting asset prices affect the national economy.

By the end of a successful course, students will have developed analytical skills allowing them to be capable of understanding and assessing economic events related to the national economy.  Students will understand the mechanisms determining inflation, interest rates, unemployment, exchange rates, and other similar macroeconomic measures.  They will be able to formulate and assess fiscal and monetary policy proposals.  Students will know the factors that cause the economy to grow in the long-run leading to higher living standards.  They will understand how and why policies either enhance or inhibit such economic growth.

Rather than through memorization, analytical skills are developed with the study of worked examples and through practice.  Practice involves completing pretest, matching, multiple choice, and true-false exercises as well as practice exams all aimed at achieving each lesson’s clearly stated objectives.

Exam Policy

All exams will be administered via D2L using a lockdown browser and remote proctoring service. Students must have access to a webcam and microphone. The system is compatible with Windows (10, 8, 7), Mac (MacOS 10.15 to 10.12, OS X 10.11, OSX 10.10), and iPad (iOS 11.0+). The system is not compatible with Chromebooks. Alternate arrangements must be approved by the instructor within the first week of the course.

Economics 301, Intermediate Microeconomics. The pedagogical approach taken by the course author is to couple clear explanations of basic concepts with students doing intensive problem solving to promote deeper understanding of microeconomic concepts. Intensive problem solving is promoted in with publisher-provided problem sets.

The topics are standard for a course at this level. They include the theory of consumer behavior, the theory of production and cost, the theory of the firm in competition and monopoly, and the analysis of market failure, including externalities, public goods, and a variety of information failures.

Exam Policy

All exams will be administered via D2L using a lockdown browser and remote proctoring service. Students must have access to a webcam and microphone. The system is compatible with Windows (10, 8, 7), Mac (MacOS 10.15 to 10.12, OS X 10.11, OSX 10.10), and iPad (iOS 11.0+). The system is not compatible with Chromebooks. Alternate arrangements must be approved by the instructor within the first week of the course.

Developed by Professor Luis de Araujo. Economics 302 online is an intermediate level course in macroeconomics. The objective of the course is to introduce students to facts and models that will help them improve their understanding of fundamental macroeconomic and public policy issues regarding inflation, unemployment, business cycles, monetary and fiscal policies. By the end of the course, students will be able to develop arguments and answers to questions like: What are the causes of unemployment? What makes the price level change over time? Why do economies face recessions and can the government do something to avoid or minimize them? What caused the great recession of 2007-2009 and which policies were implemented to deal with the crisis?  

Major concepts covered in the course include business cycles and economic growth, monetary and fiscal policy, models of aggregate demand and supply, the relation between inflation and unemployment, time-consistency of policies, conventional and unconventional policies, the great recession of 2007-2009 and its aftermath.

This is a technical course that intensively uses concepts of supply and demand and equilibrium.  The on-line version delivers the same material as one would find in a conventional class.  Most of the material is presented in “lecture” style.  In addition, the course includes a variety of web-based resources.

Exam Policy

All exams will be administered via D2L using a lockdown browser and remote proctoring service. Students must have access to a webcam and microphone. The system is compatible with Windows (10, 8, 7), Mac (MacOS 10.15 to 10.12, OS X 10.11, OSX 10.10), and iPad (iOS 11.0+). The system is not compatible with Chromebooks. Alternate arrangements must be approved by the instructor within the first week of the course.

Why are some countries rich and some countries poor? What policies can poor countries undertake, if any, to transition from poor to rich? How does globalization, including the rise of international trade and capital flows, affect poor countries' prospects for economic development? What role does the financial sector have to play in economic development? What role does foreign aid play? What explains the phenomenally high rates of growth of some poorer countries in past few decades? Is the world as a whole moving toward greater or less poverty? Are poor countries getting poorer and rich countries getting richer, or vice versa; and why? How does poor countries' economic growth impact rich countries' growth opportunities? Must economic growth eventually die out, or is it sustainable in the long-run; and if so, how? The field of economic development takes an international perspective on economic well-being, addressing these questions and many more. The questions involved are not easy, but they are fundamental; in the words of Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas, "The consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: Once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else."

EC 310 is a survey course that covers a broad range of issues in economic development. It uses the methodology of economics extensively, including economic reasoning and concepts, graphical models, numerical formulas and calculations, and basic statistical analyses. The on-line version delivers the same material as one would find in a conventional face-to-face class. Most of the material is presented in "lecture" style, with animated flash videos narrated by the professor. Each video is relatively short, typically lasting from 10-20 minutes, making it conducive to undertaking the work in small bits.

Exam Policy

All exams will be administered via D2L using a lockdown browser and remote proctoring service. Students must have access to a webcam and microphone. The system is compatible with Windows (10, 8, 7), Mac (MacOS 10.15 to 10.12, OS X 10.11, OSX 10.10), and iPad (iOS 11.0+). The system is not compatible with Chromebooks. Alternate arrangements must be approved by the instructor within the first week of the course.

Hourly compensation for the average U.S. manufacturing employee was $33.53 in 2009. In that same year, hourly compensation for the average Chinese worker employed in manufacturing was $1.74, yet the United States managed to export more than 50 billion dollars worth of manufactured goods to China. How is that possible? Similarly, in 2009, U.S. imports from all countries exceeded exports to all destinations by more than $350 billion, but the value of American aircraft exports was more than four times the value of aircraft imports. What determines a country’s overall trade balance, and how is it possible for high-wage countries to compete in the world market? Does competition in the world marketplace benefit all participants, or does it create winners and losers?  How can we quantify the gains and losses associated with globalization? What determines the value of a country’s currency, and what does it mean for that currency to be overvalued or undervalued? How does opening an economy to international financial flows affect the macro economy and impinge on the ability of policy makers to keep the economy on an even keel?

These questions and others are at the heart of international economics. This survey course addresses many of these issues. This is a technical course that intensively uses concepts of supply and demand, equilibrium, competition, and national income determination. The on-line version delivers the same material as one would find in a conventional face-to-face class. Most of the material is presented in “lecture” style, with animated flash videos that are narrated by the professor. Each video is relatively short, most lasting 10 minutes or less, making it conducive to undertaking the work in small bits. In addition, the course includes a variety of web-based resources, including video clips from television shows and films that are used to illustrate particular points.

Exam Policy

All exams will be administered via D2L using a lockdown browser and remote proctoring service. Students must have access to a webcam and microphone. The system is compatible with Windows (10, 8, 7), Mac (MacOS 10.15 to 10.12, OS X 10.11, OSX 10.10), and iPad (iOS 11.0+). The system is not compatible with Chromebooks. Alternate arrangements must be approved by the instructor within the first week of the course.

Sports are such a pervasive activity throughout the world, and economists have done much research.  This course studies some of the issues addressed in the study of sports by economists.  The tools of economics are used increasingly in sports to analyze strategy, design contests, form leagues, determine pay, assess discrimination, evaluate rules changes, monitor umpires, rank performance and organize betting markets.  These economic tools include such techniques as dynamic programming, game theory, market analysis, rank ordering and statistical reasoning.  In this sense, the course is an exercise in economic thinking about a fascinating and fun topic.  There is another reason to study sports economics: sports are the laboratory of economics.  Sports provide a controlled setting where one can examine economic forces at work.  In the study or sports one confronts many of the important questions of the discipline: what determines earnings, how do incentives affect performance, is discrimination declining in significance, where does collusion exist and what are its consequences, how does the law influence outcomes, are asset markets efficient and what is the role of the public sector.

This course is skill based and includes a number of projects.  Some of the skills are statistical, such as performing a hypothesis test or running a simple regression on Excel.  I will give you recipes to follow for how to do each.  Also, each project has a template spelling out exactly what is assigned and a recipe of step by step instructions for how to complete it.  You demonstrate competence in one skill and then move on to the next.  Competence shows up in the problem sets, quizzes and projects and these scores determine final grades – there are no exams.  Examples of projects might include topics such as: testing the “hot hand theory” in basketball; determining if “icing the kicker” in football is an effective strategy; figuring out the key factors that impact attendance for baseball games.

Exam Policy

All exams will be administered via D2L using a lockdown browser and remote proctoring service. Students must have access to a webcam and microphone. The system is compatible with Windows (10, 8, 7), Mac (MacOS 10.15 to 10.12, OS X 10.11, OSX 10.10), and iPad (iOS 11.0+). The system is not compatible with Chromebooks. Alternate arrangements must be approved by the instructor within the first week of the course.

Economics 402 online is an upper level course in macroeconomics, aimed at students with a solid background in basic models of business cycles (IS-LM Model) and basic models of Economic Growth (Solow Model), and with the objective of further advance their knowledge of fundamental macroeconomic and public policy issues regarding inflation, unemployment, business cycles, monetary and fiscal policies. The course builds on basic models learned in Intermediate Macroeconomics courses, first identifying some of their shortcomings (e.g., lack of explicit expectations formation, lack of microfoundations and its essentially static nature) and then studying dynamic models in macroeconomics which improve on these dimensions. Throughout the course we will explore the links between the theory and past and recent macroeconomic events, such as the great recession of 2008-2009, and some of the conventional and unconventional interventions that were used by policymakers to deal with the crisis.

This is a technical course that aims at formally studying dynamics models of business cycles and growth. The on-line version delivers the same material as one would find in a conventional class.  Most of the material is presented in “lecture” style.  In addition, the course includes a variety of web-based resources.

Exam Policy

All exams will be administered via D2L using a lockdown browser and remote proctoring service. Students must have access to a webcam and microphone. The system is compatible with Windows (10, 8, 7), Mac (MacOS 10.15 to 10.12, OS X 10.11, OSX 10.10), and iPad (iOS 11.0+). The system is not compatible with Chromebooks. Alternate arrangements must be approved by the instructor within the first week of the course.

Developed and taught by Prof. Leo Murembya. Topics in development economics, such as growth, technological change, structural transformation, poverty and inequality, investment in human resources, trade, international capital flows, and the political economy of policy formation and governance.

Exam Policy

All exams will be administered via D2L using a lockdown browser and remote proctoring service. Students must have access to a webcam and microphone. The system is compatible with Windows (10, 8, 7), Mac (MacOS 10.15 to 10.12, OS X 10.11, OSX 10.10), and iPad (iOS 11.0+). The system is not compatible with Chromebooks. Alternate arrangements must be approved by the instructor within the first week of the course.

This course teaches the basic methods used by economists to analyze statistical data, methods that  are also used in other data-based fields, such as marketing research and public health, and are increasingly valued by private sector employers. The on-line version of the course was developed by MSU professor Jeff Wooldridge, based on his textbook Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach, which is the world’s most highly respected and widely used Econometrics textbook.

Exam Policy

All exams will be administered via D2L using a lockdown browser and remote proctoring service. Students must have access to a webcam and microphone. The system is compatible with Windows (10, 8, 7), Mac (MacOS 10.15 to 10.12, OS X 10.11, OSX 10.10), and iPad (iOS 11.0+). The system is not compatible with Chromebooks. Alternate arrangements must be approved by the instructor within the first week of the course.

Did you know that economists study education?  Sure you may be aware that we look at how education affects growth or the wage returns to education but there is so much more.  So many questions in education policy are actually about economic policy.  How do we incentivize teachers to work more effectively? How does adding competition to the education system help or hurt? Why has the use of student loans increased so much and what should be done about it?  In this course you will learn the answers to these questions and more through recorded lectures that you can review at your pace along with selected readings and analytical writing assignments.

Topics covered include education as an externality and public good; human capital, signaling and the wage returns to education; education production functions; the role of teacher quality; peer effects and tracking; school accountability; school choice; financial incentives for teachers; postsecondary financial aid and student loans; measuring professor quality; college mismatch; and issues with for-profit colleges.

The course is a writing based course and hence satisfies the College of Social Science’s Tier II writing requirement.  Assignments and exams will be primarily essay based with a variety of short and long essay questions.

Exam Policy

All exams will be administered via D2L using a lockdown browser and remote proctoring service. Students must have access to a webcam and microphone. The system is compatible with Windows (10, 8, 7), Mac (MacOS 10.15 to 10.12, OS X 10.11, OSX 10.10), and iPad (iOS 11.0+). The system is not compatible with Chromebooks. Alternate arrangements must be approved by the instructor within the first week of the course.