Economic Issues ECON 1150

Upon successful completion of the course, the student will be able to:

• Use standard economic models to solve problems.
• Define opportunity cost and explain its importance in decision making.
• Use a standard model of consumer behaviour to demonstrate how people decide amongst many choices given a limited income.
• Use the model of supply and demand to illustrate how consumers and suppliers interact to determine price and quantity exchanged in the marketplace.
• Demonstrate the effects of price ceilings, price floors, and taxes on prices and quantities in product markets.
• Use income and price elasticities to analyze consumer demand for a product or service.
• Distinguish between explicit and implicit costs.
• Calculate revenues, costs, and profits.
• Distinguish between a business's accounting profits and economic profits.
• Show how the concept of opportunity cost influences business decisions.
• Differentiate between short-run and long-run production decisions.
• Demonstrate how businesses use cost analysis to make production and sales decisions.
• Describe the characteristics of perfectly competitive and imperfectly competitive markets.
• Demonstrate why a perfectly competitive firm produces an output where price equals marginal cost.
• Determine the shut-down point.
• Explain how market structure influences a firm's strategic pricing and production decisions.
• Evaluate the economic efficiency of various market structures.
• Explain how globalization and technology have changed the Canadian industrial landscape.
• Assess the role of government in the marketplace.
• Describe Canada's recent macroeconomic history.
• Understand the relationships amongst economic variables such as unemployment, inflation, and real Gross.
• Domestic Product, and determine how changes in economic variables impact Canadian production.
• Recognize the role of the Bank of Canada and the banking industry in the Canadian economy.
• Explain how fiscal and monetary policies affect economic activity, and determine which policy would be most effective in achieving our economic goals.
• Describe how globalization impacts the Canadian economy.

Effective as of Winter 2007