Macroeconomic Principles 5 credits

Understanding the economy as a whole is essential for interpreting developments that shape business, policy, and society. This course introduces you to the key questions of modern macroeconomics: What determines economic growth, inflation, and unemployment? Why do economies experience booms and recessions? How can governments and central banks stabilise the economy? By studying these issues, you will gain insights into the forces that influence living standards and economic stability across countries and over time. The course covers how to measure economic activity through indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP), inflation, and unemployment, and how these indicators reflect overall performance. It examines long-run growth and productivity, as well as short-run business cycles driven by demand and supply shocks. A central focus is fiscal and monetary policy—how policymakers use spending, taxation, and interest rates to manage output, employment, and prices. Throughout the course, theory is connected to real-world cases and current policy debates, enabling you to see how macroeconomic reasoning applies in practice. After completing the course, you will be able to interpret macroeconomic data, understand policy responses to economic fluctuations, and critically evaluate economic developments in the news. You will strengthen your ability to think analytically about aggregate outcomes and relate them to business and societal contexts. The course contributes to the programme’s broader learning goals of developing structured economic reasoning, critical reflection, and informed decision-making in an international environment.