To enhance students’ understanding of how economics illuminates consumer and firm behaviour and industry structure;

To encourage students to use economic tools in their approach to other modules and to their future professional life;

To help students to see the richness of possibilities arising from the use of economics in business and management research, both academic and practical.

(LO1) Appreciate the role of economics tools in business and management decisions;

(LO2) Be able to use basic economic concepts in their approach to other modules and to their professional work;

(LO3) Be able to recognise simple economic models presented using graphs or algebra;

(LO4) Be familiar with basic techniques of empirical work in economics;

(LO5) Be able to write a report researching the demand environment for a particular good or service.

(S1) Adaptability. Developed via the ability to adapt theoretical models to practical problems.

(S2) Problem solving skills. Developed via the ability to think logically, to appreciate the significance of the relationships between relevant economic variables, the consequences of specific changes, to think through a sequence of steps of an economic argument.

(S3) Numeracy. Real-world data used for coursework element. Empirical methods of demand estimation applied.

(S4) Commercial awareness. Real-world data used for coursework element. Lecture series refers to real-world business case studies.

(S5) Teamwork. Coursework element is team based.

(S6) Organisational skills. Students are expected to organise their own learning within the guidelines given.

(S7) Communication skills. Coursework assessment to be communicated in the form of a written report.

(S8) IT skills. Developed via coursework assessment to be completed using web based database and statistical analysis using an IT analysis package.

(S9) International awareness. Globalisation is considered during the lecture series and international data used.

(S10) Lifelong learning skills. The Lecture - Tutorial Workshop structure is based around the lecture – interrogation of learning cycle of learning.

(S11) Ethical awareness. Students will consider the principal-agent problem in managerial decision making as well as the potential problems of agendas in voting mechanisms although these are not addressed strictly as ethical issues they are complementary to learning in other modules.

Lectures x 12 hours
The lectures are intended to address, in particular, the (core) conceptual issues of the topics covered in the syllabus.

Tutorials x 12 hours
Tutorials will deepen the students' understanding of the lecture contents by discussing open questions resulting from the lectures and by working through appropriate exercises.

Self-directed learning x 126 hours

Introduction to the module and ‘thinking Like an economist’;

Demand and supply and market equilibrium;

Elasticity;

Supply decisions: costs, revenue and profit;

Policy intervention and welfare I;

Policy intervention and welfare II;

Perfectly competitive markets;

Monopoly;

Imperfect competition: oligopoly and monopolistic markets;

Asymmetric information;

Political economy I;

Political Economy II.