A) Microeconomics (Bellak)
• Participants gain or deepen their knowledge in microeconomics, understood ‚essentially as a science of choice‘.
• Participants gain an understanding of the huge importance of market failures in crucial markets in market economies.
• Participants know how to analyse consumer and production decisions in neoclassical economics. (assumptions, methods, model outcomes under certainty and uncertainty) Participants go beyond a mickey-mouse critique of neoclassical economics.
• Participants are able to analyse individual decisions as well as - to a limited extent - interactive decisions of firms and consumers and the respective methods. (stationary vs. non-stationary environment)
• Participants are aware of the welfare consequences of individual decisions for societies; as well as the advantages and disadvantages of paretian welfare economics as a particular approach of analysis in welfare economics.
• To a limited extent, participants gain knowledge about the criticism to the neoclassical approach as well as to alternative approaches (behavioral economics in particular). Merits as well as weaknesses of alternative approaches are discussed.
The knowledge gained should enable the participants to study and critically evaluate contemporary microeconomic models and theories.
B) Macroeconomics (Kubin)
Upon completion of the macroeconomics part of this course, students ...
... are able to explain and analyse macroeconomic models (in the New-Keynesian Tradition) with imperfectly competitive goods markets;
... are able to provide an overview of various possibilities to include imperfectly competitive labour markets in macroeconomic models;
... are able to explain and Analyse one central macroeconomic model with imperfectly competitive goods and labour markets;
... are able to to provide an overview of the role of money and money supply in macroeconomics models;
... are able to evaluate strengths and weaknesses of the above mentioned models (including their fit with empirical evidence);
... are able to derive and evaluate policy implications;
... are able to review contributions in journals of general interest (e.g. the Journal of Economic Perspectives; the Journal of Economic Literature) as well as core macroeconomics journals (e.g. the Journal of Macroeeconomics).
C) Mathematical Methods (Leydold)
Participants gain or deepen their knowledge of mathematical methods that are obligatory to the understanding of economic literature. They are able to understand and apply the formal methods required in microeconomics and macroeconomics.
These includes
• linear algebra (matrix algebra, determinants, Cramer's rule, vector space, eigenvalues)
• calculus (derivatives and integrals, implicit and inverse function theorem, Taylor series, Hessian matrix, big Oh notation)
• static optimization (convex and quasi-convex functions, stationary points, extrema, Lagrange multiplicator, Kuhn-Tucker condition, envelope theorem)
• linear systems (first order linear difference equation, cobweb diagram, first order differential equations, stability of solutions)