Columbia University School of Social Work
 
T7812 Macroeconomics and Policy Analysis

Overview and Rationale

This course presents the basic principles and theory of microeconomics within the context of public policy issues and public and private sector decision-making processes. The overarching goal is to provide students with the analytical and theoretical tools of economics that will allow them to analyze public sector issues, make accurate predictions of market and individual behaviors using academically acceptable and up-to-date techniques, and to construct sound economic arguments in order to appropriately influence the public policy decision-making processes they will encounter in their social work/public policy careers.

Learning Outcomes

In this course, students will learn to . . .

  1. Articulate the basic principles and theory of micro- and macroeconomics within the context of domestic public policy issues.
  2. Analyze public sector issues using macroeconomic theory and analysis techniques.
  3. Make accurate predictions about aggregate output price level and unemployment through macroeconomic analysis.
  4. Construct sound economic arguments that may be used in macroeconomic policy-making.

Council on Social Work Education Core Competencies

This course contributes toward mastery of the following core areas of social work competency identified by the Council on Social Work Education.

Social workers . . .

  • Apply critical thinking to inform and communicate professional judgments.
  • Engage in research-informed practice and practice-informed research.
  • Apply knowledge of human behavior and the social environment.
  • Assess individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.
  • Intervene with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.

Core Content Themes

  • Theory of production, technology, returns to scale in production processes.
  • Cost structures in production, cost minimization behavior
  • Profit maximization behavior and market outcomes
  • Individual and Market supply functions
  • Analysis of competitive markets, using market supply and demand behavior
  • Analysis of monopoly and monopsony markets
  • Monopolistic competition, oligopolies, and strategic interactions—Game Theory revisited.
  • Price discrimination and other pricing strategies when assumptions of perfect competition are relaxed and uneven market power is introduced.
  • Trade topics: comparative and absolute advantage, measuring gains/losses from free trade and regulated or limited trade.
  • Cost benefit analysis as a tool to measure the economic cost of attaining political goals through regulated/restricted trade.
  • Macroeconomic data, collection and analysis, use of data to measure wellbeing of a society as a whole.
  • Development of macroeconomic models (IS-LM and AS-AD) from foundations of individual firm and economic agent behavior.
  • Use the macro models above to evaluate short run and long run effects of fiscal and monetary policy in a closed economy.
  • Use the macro models to evaluate short run and long run effects of trade, exchange rate, fiscal, and monetary policy in an open economy.
  • The government's role in setting fiscal, monetary, and trade policy; analysis of government policy effectiveness given the attributes of the supply and demand functions.
  • Growth models, development issues
  • Conclusion of economic modeling techniques, final discussion of economic models as an accurate representation of economic behavior in the real world.