Today marks the end of the Economics for Business module. What would I like you to take away from the module?
0. Economics is a way of thinking carefully through complicated issues, with some clarity. Economists should be very, very humble about the quality of their knowledge, but they do have something to contribute to public debates. I emphasized the development of reading reasonably technical pieces and writing about them as a skill through the book review, and emphasized the importance of empirical work, through your data project. I also tried to get you to do the reading each week via the online aplia tests. I'm sure it was all a bit much at times, but the payoff is that you've no final exam. More specifically, I wanted to show you that:
1. Models of firms should describe them as growth maximising as well as profit maximising firms.
2.The role of uncertainty is not well understood in microeconomic models of behaviour.
3. The market as an organising principle works in theory, in practice many failures are possible.
4. All economies experience crises-some of these are supply-side, others are demand-side. You can't cure a demand-deficient economy with a supply side measure, by and large.
5. Monetary and Fiscal policy mean very different things when considered in the context of a small open economy in a period of globalisation.
Next year I'll probably teach something completely different to Economics for Business. I vary it every year. This year it made sense to teach you about uncertainty, firm level behaviour, and demand-deficient economies. Next year perhaps the important issues will be European integration (or lack thereof), and currency crises. We'll see. I promise it won't be boring.
What did you take from the module? What was your best bit? What was your worst bit?
When are the book review results out ?
Early next week Michael.