Economics is divided into two streams: microeconomics and macroeconomics. Microeconomics focuses on the behaviours and interactions of economic agents, such as firms, households, and individuals. Macroeconomics looks, firstly, at the economy as a whole, especially the behaviours of aggregate measures, such as gross domestic product (GDP); measures of economic welfare; the quantity of capital, labour, and material and energy resources used; the quantity and nature of the wastes generated; the unemployment rate; the inflation rate; exchange rates; and interest rates. Secondly, macroeconomics considers how these aggregate measures vary with the business cycle and respond to government policies, ecological disturbances, institutional changes, international trading arrangements, and society’s values and individual behavioural patterns.

The course provides an overview of both microeconomics and macroeconomics. Throughout the course, we will consider contemporary economic issues through the lens of real-world economics and their relevance to strategic decision-making, organisational management, and economic, social, and environmental policy-setting.

On successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

1	Understand key economic concepts, principles, and analytical tools, as well as the ‘language’ and ways of thinking employed by real-world economists
2	Apply key microeconomic and macroeconomic principles and analytical tools to make better managerial decisions and communicate solutions convincingly to both economists and non-economists
3	Understand economic policy issues and their relevance to management decisions
4	Articulate economic conditions and policy issues and why they are relevant to management
5	Understand the roles that governments and markets can play in improving the welfare of our society

1)Brander & Perloff (2019) Managerial Economic and Strategy, 2nd edition

1) Kelton, S. (2020), The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and How to Build a Better Economy, John Murray.

2) Daly, H. (2007), Ecological Economics and Sustainable Development: Selected Essays of Herman Daly, Edward Elgar.

3) Hail, S. (2018), Economics for Sustainable Prosperity, Palgrave Macmillan.

4) Kahneman, D. (2011), Thinking, Fast and Slow, Penguin Books.

I will post course materials, assessment tasks and important announcements in MyUni. Please check both our MyUni course website and your university email account regularly. 

https://myuni.adelaide.edu.au
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/its/webmail/

Lectures will be recorded (whenever possible) and made available in the Echo 360 folder on MyUni. Please note that there may be occasions when the recording fails for technical reasons.

Our course will be conducted over 10weekly sessions. All sessions will be held on Thursday evenings from 5.00pm to 8.00pm, with a short break halfway through. We will generally cover one topic on each evening. As it is difficult to predict exactly how long it will take to cover each topic and I don’t want to limit our in-class discussions, we may not finish our coverage of a topic in the designated session; if so, we will finish it in our next session.

Given the breadth of topics covered, much of our in-class time will necessarily be spent in “interactive lecture” mode, with the emphasis on interactive. I like to make our in-class time as interactive as possible, so please feel free to ask questions and/or offer your perspectives and relevant examples from your own experience at any time. We may also break up our sessions with short problem-solving exercises, reviews of assignment questions/answers and discussion of current economic issues to help us understand and apply what we learn. I may ask individual students to present their answers to particular assignment questions in-class. I’ll bring at least
one current issue to each session for us to discuss. Please also feel free to suggest current issues that you would like us to discuss.

While you don’t necessarily have to read the lecture notes prior to the relevant session, it would be useful to complete the required reading beforehand.

To help ensure that our classes are as effective as possible, please feel free to provide me with feedback at any time. Your feedback will be particularly valuable in the early stages of our course, as this will enable me to change my teaching style before it is too late. In addition, I would be grateful if you could complete a SELT form and provide written comments (in addition to numeric scores) at the end of our course, as that will help me improve the course and my teaching for future students.

Important note: This course assumes no previous training in economics. Please be aware that when people first study economics, they will almost-certainly feel frustrated for some time. I certainly did! We do need to learn a number of economic concepts/tools before we are able to tackle the more interesting stuff. It will almost-certainly take some time before you feel that what we are learning starts to “clicks together”. Therefore, if you feel somewhat frustrated in our first few sessions, that is completely normal. You will also feel somewhat frustrated even at the end of our course because, given the time available and the territory we need to cover, we will not be able to go into as much depth as you would like on various issues. It is more important that you gain some knowledge and the ability to use a range of economic concepts/tools rather than an in-depth knowledge of only a few. However, to partially ease your frustration, I will provide optional (non-assessable) readings and/or optional attachments to our lecture notes so that you can explore particular topics in more depth if you wish to.

The University of Adelaide expects full-time students (i.e., those taking four 3-unit course at a time) to devote a total of 48 hours per week to their studies. This translates to 12 hours per week for our 3-unit course. That is, in addition to our 3 hours of class time per week, you should expect to devote 9 hours per week to your studies in this course.

Please note: Schedule subject to change

Session	Topic	Readings
1	The concepts and tools of Microeconomics, Demand and Supply	Brander & Perloff Ch 1&2
2	Elasticity: The responsiveness of demand and supply and Consumer Choice	Brander & Perloff Ch 3 & 4
3	Production and Costs	Brander & Perloff Ch 5 & 6
4	Market Structures Part 1: Firm Organisations and Market Structures	Brander & Perloff Ch 7
5	Market Structures Part 2: Competition and Monopoly	Brander & Perloff Ch 8 & 9
6	Market Structures Part 3: Pricing with Market Power Monopolistic Competition and Oligopoly	Brander & Perloff Ch 10 & 11
7	Economic Efficiency; Market Failure and the Role of Government	Brander & Perloff Ch 16
8	Managing Decisions Under Uncertainty and Asymetric Information	Brander & Perloff Ch 14 & 15
9	Monetary and Fiscal Policy
10	International Trade	Brander & Perloff Ch 17

There are no specific course requirements for Economics for Management and students are not expected to have any prior knowledge of Economic Theory.

Assessment Task	Task Type	Due	Weighting	Learning Outcome
Quiz	Individual	TBA Myuni	30%	1,2,3
Group Project	Group	TBA Myuni	30%	1,2,3,4,6
Individual Assignment	Individual	TBA Myuni	40%	1,2,3,4,5,6

Assessment Overview:
Assessment in this course will comprise formal and informal assessment to test your knowledge and learning throughout the course. Each topic contains a weekly quiz which will allow you to test your knowledge and understanding of the material presented. These questions are designed to test your knowledge of the topic and to gain an understanding of the applications of the relevant concepts. We will also discuss other questions through the course on a weekly basis. You are encouraged to read questioningly and to be critical of statements presented. Time will be allocated in each session for consideration of the topic questions and to discuss issues raised. There will also be two assignments through the course, a group assignment and an individual assignment to test your knowledge of the course content.

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Weekly Quiz: (30% of the course marks)

Quizes will be conducted online and weekly. They will include some multiple choice and short answer questions. There will be a timelimit on how long the quiz is available to students to complete.

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Case Study: (30% of the course marks)
The case study would be completed by students in small groups (2-4 students in a group). This will involve critical assessment of an industry of your choice. The word limit will be 5,000. The exercise will account for 30% of the course marks.  The aim of this exercise is to apply economics concepts to critically analyse an industry of your choice.

While completing the cases study you may consider yourself as a consultant who has been approached by a firm or an investor to undertake an analysis of the market trends in a particular industry. The firm may be considering an investment within the industry and is in the evaluation phase. As the principal researcher/consultant you have been handed the brief. You may wish to form a team of 2 - 4 colleagues in order to prepare the required report.

Select an industry in which you have a particular interest. You should aim to analyse the market trends over a 5 - 10 year period. Therefore choose carefully as availability of information is a major consideration. You should then use this information and the concepts studied in the course to prepare your report. Please refer to the attached notes on report writing to gain an understanding of how the report should be structured.

The report should address the following questions.

1. Within the industrial group describe trends in relation to production, number of participants, prices, competition both domestic and from imports, employment, investment and profitability.
2. Determinants of changes in demand and supply.
3. The impact of technological change and economies of scale.
4. Pricing strategies and interaction between firms.
5. The nature, extent and impact of Government policies.
6. You opinion as to whether the industry represents an area of potential investment for your client.

This assessment will be used to create the economic framework for your company/organisation.

Purpose
The purpose of this assessment is to demonstrate you can apply critical economic tools and analysis to assess an industry environment in which a new investment or market entry could be developed for a company/organisation.

Outcomes
This assessment maps to the following course outcomes:

• CLO1 Understand key economic concepts, principles, and analytical tools, as well as the ‘language’ and ways of thinking employed by real-world economists
• CLO2 Apply key microeconomic and macroeconomic principles and analytical tools to make better managerial decisions and communicate solutions convincingly to both economists and non-economists
• CLO4 Articulate economic conditions and policy issues and why they are relevant to management
• CLO5 Understand the roles that governments and markets can play in improving the welfare of our society

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Individual Assessment – Strategic Growth Report (40% of course Marks)

You will develop a targeted economic situation analysis and strategic growth proposal for your chosen company/organisation to identify and analyse the current operating environment using one of more economic theories. This report will be presented to the CEO and Board of your chosen company/organisation.

This is a technical economic report, that will provide the economic analysis to identify the current operating conditions for your company/organisations. You will build this analysis into a detailed strategic growth proposal which will utilise key economic research and analysis of the future environment to identify performance improvements and growth that will be achieved by your company/organisation based upon economic theories, concepts and tools developed in this course.

You will utilise company/organisational data, in addition to macro-level environmental economic data (ABS, Australian Government, UN, World Bank, etc) as part of your analysis. This is a technical economic reportl, that will provide the economic analysis to identify the future performance opportunities and forecasts for your company/organisation. The economic analysis and strategic growth reportl will apply economic theories, concepts and tools introduced through this course in undertaking this analysis and making recommendations to the CEO and board.

This assessment will be used to create the economic framework for your company/organisation.

Purpose
The purpose of this assessment is to demonstrate you can apply critical economic tools and analysis to assess the current environment in which your company/organisation is operating.

Outcomes
This assessment maps to the following course outcomes:

• CLO1 Understand key economic concepts, principles, and analytical tools, as well as the ‘language’ and ways of thinking employed by real-world economists
• CLO2 Apply key microeconomic and macroeconomic principles and analytical tools to make better managerial decisions and communicate solutions convincingly to both economists and non-economists
• CLO3 Understand economic policy issues and their relevance to management decisions
• CLO4 Articulate economic conditions and policy issues and why they are relevant to management
• CLO5 Measure how the global economic environment influences organisational innovation and strategic managerial decision-making.

Please refer to MyUni for further instructions
regarding how to submit assignments. Late submissions will not be accepted.
Please retain a copy of all assignments submitted.

Additional Assessment A student who is unable to sit either or all of the assignments may apply to take a replacement test on medical or compassionate grounds. If a student receives a final mark of 45-49 for the course, he/she will automatically be granted an additional assessment. This will most likely be in the form of a new exam (Additional Assessment) and will have the same weight as the original exam. If, after replacing the original exam mark with the new exam mark, it is calculated that the student has passed the course, the student will receive a final grade of 50 Pass for the course (no higher). If the calculation totals less than 50, the student’s grade will be Fail and the higher of the original mark or the mark following the Additional Assessment will be recorded as the final result.