Principles of Macroeconomics

The aim of this course is to provide students with an introduction to macroeconomics. The course focuses on the behavior of the economy in the short-run and middle-run, specifically looking at the goods market, the financial market and the labor market. The course is designed to help students understand how these markets operate, how they interact with each other, and how they are impacted by shocks and macroeconomic policies.

Why do economies expand sometimes, raising employment and living standards, and shrinking at other times? What is a recession? What happened in 2008–09 when the world economy was hit by the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s? How did government policy respond to the crisis and was this response effective?

More generally, which shocks affect macroeconomic activity? How do these shocks affect output, employment, investment, or consumption? Can government policies make economies grow or stop them from shrinking? Why do we have inflation? Is inflation a bad thing? Is there anything we can do to reduce inflation? Why do we have unemployment? Do policies to reduce unemployment work?

These are some of the central questions that fascinate macroeconomists. If you are curious about how macroeconomists look at the world around them, how they model it, and how this helps answering the questions you just read, then this is the course for you.

Course leader

Annaïg Morin - Department of Economics

Target group

This is a bachelor level course. CBS Summer University courses at Copenhagen Business School is open to all and welcomes domestic and international students as well as professionals.

Course aim

Explain basic macroeconomic terminology in a comprehensive way.

Describe and explain the assumptions and mechanisms of the main macroeconomic models (e.g. the IS-LM model and the IS-LM-PC model). Illustrate these models graphically and solve them algebraically.

Describe how output is determined in the short run and the medium run. Explain how output is affected by shocks.

Describe the main determinants of other important macroeconomic variables such as inflation, unemployment, real wage, interest rate, etc. Explain how these macroeconomic variables are affected by shocks.

Perform policy experiments (e.g., changes in government spendings or changes in money supply). Interpret the mechanisms verbally and graphically, and solve algebraically.

Credits info

7.5 EC
This is an intensive 3-week course. 3-week courses cannot be combined with any other courses.
Find more information on our website.

Fee info

DKK 6000: Tuition fee for Open University students (EU/EEA/Swiss citizenship)
DKK 12000: Tuition fee for non-European students.