The School of Mind & Society · the social sciences
Economics
How people, firms, and nations choose under scarcity — and what prices quietly say about it.
Supply, demand, and the logic of choice — one market at a time.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~30 hours
Unit I — Choice Under Scarcity
Opportunity cost · Thinking at the margin · Gains from trade and comparative advantage
Unit II — Supply & Demand
Demand and supply curves · Equilibrium and what moves it · Elasticity · Price controls and their consequences
Unit III — Firms & Markets
Costs and production · Competition and monopoly · Oligopoly and strategic behavior
Unit IV — When Markets Fail
Externalities · Public goods · Information problems
GDP, inflation, unemployment: the economy seen whole, and the levers that try to steady it.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~30 hours
Unit I — Measuring the Economy
GDP and its blind spots · Unemployment: kinds and counts · Inflation and price indexes
Unit II — Growth
Production functions and productivity · Institutions and long-run growth
Unit III — Cycles & Policy
Aggregate demand and aggregate supply · Fiscal policy and multipliers · Central banks, interest rates, and inflation targeting
Unit IV — The Open Economy
Exchange rates · Trade balances · Financial crises and their anatomy
Regression, identification, and the hard craft of finding cause in economic data.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~36 hours
Unit I — The Regression Toolkit
Ordinary least squares · Interpreting coefficients · Standard errors and inference
Unit II — Threats to Truth
Omitted variables · Selection bias · Measurement error
Unit III — Identification Strategies
Randomized experiments · Instrumental variables · Difference-in-differences · Regression discontinuity
Unit IV — Practice
Data cleaning and documentation · Robustness checks · Replicating a published paper
Where real choosers depart from the textbook: bias, framing, and the limits of willpower.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~22 hours
Unit I — Against the Rational Agent
Expected utility and its anomalies · Prospect theory and loss aversion · Framing effects
Unit II — Time & Self-Control
Hyperbolic discounting · Commitment devices · Defaults and procrastination
Unit III — Markets & Policy
Nudges and their critics · Behavioral finance · Fairness and market design
Why some nations grow rich and others stay poor — geography, institutions, and evidence.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~28 hours
Unit I — The Great Divergence
The facts of global inequality · Geography and disease hypotheses · Institutions and colonial legacies
Unit II — Development Up Close
Poverty traps · Credit, insurance, and microfinance · Randomized trials in the field
Unit III — Structural Change
From farm to factory to service · Education and health as investment · Aid, trade, and growth policy
Smith to Keynes to the present: economics as a long argument about how the world works.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~24 hours
Unit I — Classical Foundations
Smith: markets and moral sentiments · Ricardo and comparative advantage · Malthus and the population question
Unit II — Revolutions
The marginalist turn · Marx as economist · Keynes and the General Theory
Unit III — The Modern Conversation
Monetarism and rational expectations · The behavioral and institutional turns · What economists still disagree about