Economic Reasoning for Public Decision-Making

This course introduces students to key economic concepts such as scarcity, efficiency, monopolies, and other markets to investigate the notions of economic efficiency in a competitive marketplace. In addition, this course equips students to discover how efficiency is affected by distortions relevant to public policy, especially regulations, externalities, and incomplete information. From the macroeconomics side, we cover both short-run topics, long-run topics and the effects of government debt. Students in this course practice applying these principles to the range of decisions that public sector executives have to make in order to understand the trade-offs inherent in any public policy or program.