Overview of Course

Every society finds rules or systems for answering 3 fundamental economic questions: What should be produced? How should those outputs be produced? and Who will get the outputs? While many societies increasingly rely on markets to answer those questions, government and informal cultural rules also have major effects, and affect the resulting level of people’s well-being. This course is designed to introduce you to the subject of economics, as it pertains to the behavior of people, firms, and societies, and to their desires to get the most from limited means. Economics is a science about choice, not money. We use the three languages of economic discourse to illustrate our points of view: words, graphs and (a little bit of) math. In the context of the Spring 2024 SAS voyage, student discussions, assignments and field trips include exposure to national economic systems that historically view the role of government, markets, efficiency and equity, incentives and expressions of individual tastes and preferences differently than most ‘westerners’ are accustomed to. We discuss in context what dimensions of these approaches have served their citizens well and which have led to mismanagement of valuable human, physical, financial and natural resources.