Business Economics

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Introduction

The aim of this page is to provide you a big picture of Business Economic course. This aim can be approached by describing the goal of the course, knowledge learned, skills acquired, and the course structure.

In supporting to the aim of this page, some selected essays of particular weekly topics are presented in the last part of the page. One essay has got a highly distinguished mark due to its comprehensivity and clarity without sacrifying its simplicity. The other essays also get distinguish mark. So, hopefully they all will have benefit for you!

So, happy exploring, and get the big picture about Business Economics! Find out how it will be useful for business students!

 

The goal of the course

This course is aimed to provide an introduction to economic analysis, with particular applications to decision making in business. On completion of this course, students should have an understanding of economic concepts, and be able to apply simple economic models to the analysis of relevant economic issues.

This course assumes no previous study of economics.

 

What knowledge is learned

  • The economic principles to support 'rational' decision making in business
  • The economic environment in which business decisions must be made
  • An understanding of the key business and economic statistics that are periodically released by Australian government and international agencies, including:
    • Australian Bureau of Statistics
    • The Reserve Bank of Australia
    • The Australian Treasury
    • The OECD
    • The IMF
  • An understanding of the role and impact of economic policy to the economy of the country.

 

What skills are acquired from Business Economics

The skills acquired from this course is the ability to analyse and to examine these economics stuffs:

  • government and business reports
  • magazine and newspaper articles
  • journals/monographs dealing with contemporary economic issues

Reports or articles above will be analysed using simple micro and macro economic toos and reasoning taught in this course.

 

Course structure

The structure of the course can be divided into Microeconomic and Macroeconomic streams as follows:

Microeconomic Stream:

  • Introduction to Economic Concepts
    Opportunity Cost, Efficiency, Comparative Advantage
  • The Competitive Market Model
    Demand, Supply, Elasticity
  • Application of The Competitive Model
    Floor and Ceiling Prices, Tax Incidence
  • The Theory of The Firm
    Production and Costs
  • Market Models I
    Competition vs. Monopoly
  • Market Models II
    Oligopoly and Monopolistic Competition
  • Market Failure
    Externalities and Public goods

Macroeconomic Stream:

  • Measuring Economic Activity
    • Introduction
      Macroeconomic goals and Introduction to the Australian economy
    • Measuring Economic Activity
      National accounting concepts, the consumer price index, GDP as a measure of economic welfare
  • Aggregate Supply and Aggregate Demand (A simple macro model)
    Aggregate Demand, Aggregate Supply, Macroeconomic Equilibrium
  • Money and Monetary Policy
    Money, Interest Rates, Monetary Policy Tools, Monetary Transmission Mechanism
  • Fiscal Policy and Exchange Rates
    • Fiscal Policy
      Instruments of fiscal policy, fiscal policy and the economy, and fiscal policy in Australia
    • Exchange Rates
      Demand and supply of foreign exchange, fixed and floating exchange rates, the Australian dollar.
  • Unemployment and Inflation
    • Unemployment
      Labour market indicators, causes of unemployment, unemployment policy
    • Inflation
      Causes, effects, inflation and unemployment
  • Balance of Payments and The East Asian Financial Crisis
    • Balance of Payments
      Balance of payments accounts, foreign debts
    • The East Asian Financial Crisis
      Causes, role of the IMF

 

Essays obtained from this course

This section presents you a selected collection of several essays from my friends. All of the essays are the answer to discussion questions of particular topics of weekly lectures. There is also one best essay that get a highly distinguished mark due to its simplicity, comprehensibility and clarity. The other essays get good marks as well and adequate for your references.

So, hopefully they all will be useful for you.

The essays are:

Gross Domestic Products & CPI Calculation
Free Trade
Aggregate Supply and Demand
Monopoly

Thanks to Helena Lembong, P. Saut Manihuruk, Shanti, and Howard Hsu for all the permission for posting the essay here.

 

Sources:

  1. Faculty of Commerce + Economics,  Postgraduate Coursework Programs 1999, The UNSW
  2. Faculty of Commerce + Economics, Handbook 1999, The UNSW
  3. Faculty of Commerce and Economics,  ECON5103 - Business Economics, Lecture Outline and References, 1999

Quote of this page:

"Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm."
(Sir Winston Churchill)

(c)1999, Hendrarto Sutarto.