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Principles of Macroeconomics

15 instructional weeks + finals week (Week 1–Week 16) Free sample edition

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This is a complete course: fifteen instructional weeks and a finals week, every student component, built with The Course Maker and ready to import. Weeks are relative (Week 1 to Week 16); you set the dates when you import it. Browse the whole thing below. Click any piece to read it in full, then click back to return here.

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Free sample edition. No instructor, institution, or term identity appears anywhere in this edition, by design. The syllabus carries fill-in slots (instructor name, contact, office hours, institution policies) for the adopting instructor to make it their own. (Original objectives written from the standard Principles of Macroeconomics body of knowledge; not copied from any school's course outline.)

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What the paid build adds

This sample is complete and yours to keep. A paid build is the same course made yours in the ways a download cannot be:

Every date set to your term and your breaks, and re-paced to a second campus calendar at no extra charge.
Your syllabus, your policies, and your outline of record in the build, with an alignment report that shows which component addresses each objective and SLO, and a Universal design for learning section drawn from the course's own data.
Your name on every page as the course's creator.
Kept current every term: fresh assessment variants, every link re-checked and the dead ones replaced, and the subject brought up to date where it has moved.
The full instructor pack: answer keys and worked solutions, the alignment report, and the UDL map.
A record for your college's file: the design attestation, a disclosure statement for every edition, and what changed at the end of each term.

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Included in every course

ChapterRequired
Required in every course. Every module presents the same content in three ways — a chapter to read, a slide deck with speaker notes, and captioned videos — so each student can choose how to take it in. The course is designed to reflect UDL's multiple means of representation, and the alignment report describes this to your curriculum committee.
Slide deck with speaker notesRequired
Required in every course. Every module presents the same content in three ways — a slide deck with speaker notes, a chapter to read, and captioned videos — so each student can choose how to take it in. The course is designed to reflect UDL's multiple means of representation, and the alignment report describes this to your curriculum committee.
Captioned video linksRequired
Required in every course. Every module presents the same content in three ways — captioned videos, a chapter to read, and a slide deck with speaker notes — so each student can choose how to take it in. The course is designed to reflect UDL's multiple means of representation, and the alignment report describes this to your curriculum committee. We link videos only when a caption track exists (from the creator or generated automatically), and we never host them.

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The syllabus

Policies, schedule, and grading

Read the full course syllabusPolicies, the week-by-week schedule, grading, and the bring-your-own-AI rules, with fill-in slots for the adopting instructor.→

Weighted gradebook

Assignment groups & weights

Configured in the export — the gradebook is set the moment the course is imported.

Assignment group	Weight	Notes
Tutorials & Practice	10%
Quizzes	10%
Workshops	20%
Assignments	25%
Discussions	15%
Exams	20%
Total	100%	Letter Standard

Objectives & outcomes

What students will be able to do

Objective 1

Apply the tools of macroeconomic modeling — scarcity, opportunity cost, the production possibilities frontier, and the circular-flow model — and distinguish positive statements (what is) from normative statements (what ought to be).

Objective 2

Measure an economy's output with gross domestic product by the expenditure approach (C + I + G + NX), decide what counts and what does not, distinguish real from nominal GDP, and compute and interpret the GDP deflator.

Objective 3

Measure the price level and the labor market — compute and interpret the CPI, the inflation rate, a real wage change, the unemployment rate, and the labor-force participation rate — and classify frictional, structural, and cyclical unemployment.

Objective 4

Explain the sources of long-run economic growth and productivity, and compute and interpret growth rates, doubling times by the rule of 70, and per-capita growth.

Objective 5

Use the aggregate-demand and aggregate-supply model to analyze short-run fluctuations and the business cycle — name which curve shifts, in which direction, and what happens to the price level and real output — and measure recessionary and inflationary gaps.

Objective 6

Analyze fiscal policy — government spending, taxes, expansionary and contractionary stances, and automatic stabilizers — apply the spending and tax multipliers, and distinguish the deficit (a flow) from the national debt (a stock).

Objective 7

Explain money, banking, and monetary policy — the functions of money, how fractional-reserve banking creates money and the money multiplier, the Federal Reserve's goals and tools, the money market, and the transmission mechanism from the money supply to interest rates, investment, and aggregate demand.

Objective 8

Analyze the short-run and long-run Phillips curve and the quantity equation of money, and apply open-economy tools — comparative advantage and the gains from trade, the trade balance, exchange rates, and the balance of payments — and weigh the Keynesian and classical / monetarist views of stabilization policy evenhandedly.

SLO A

Build, manipulate, and read macroeconomic models — compute GDP, a price index, an inflation, unemployment, or growth rate, or a multiplier; shift the AD-AS model or the money market and read the new price level, output, or interest rate — and interpret the results in words.

SLO B

Apply macroeconomic reasoning to real-world policy, distinguishing positive analysis from normative judgment and weighing the major schools of thought and competing arguments fairly.

How this course is built — read this first

Every teaching module carries the same set, in the order a student meets it: a Start Here overview, the chapter (the primary reading), the lecture (titled “Lecture: <module title>”), the slide deck with speaker notes, readings & resources (links only), the lecture tutorial and practice exercises worked with an AI tutor, the quiz, the discussion and the assignment, and the weekly Model Workshop. Exams: the midterm in Week 8 and the final in Week 16, a finals week with no module.

The discussion and the assignment each ship in both formats: the adaptive version is the published, graded item, and its traditional alternative (no AI) is a separate item that ships unpublished beside it. An instructor who prefers the traditional format publishes it and unpublishes or deletes the adaptive one.

What you see here is every student page. The instructor pack (answer keys and worked solutions, rubric calibration, image prompts, audio-brief scripts, and the alignment report) ships only in the download, never on this site.

Adaptive and traditional

Discussions & assignments: both formats in every module

Same learning objective either way; what changes is how the work happens.

Adaptive · published

Work it through with an approved chatbot

The student does the work in a guided conversation with an approved chatbot, using a copy-paste prompt the course provides. For a discussion, the AI is a Socratic partner that challenges their thinking and never writes the post. For an assignment, the AI is a coach: it asks questions, checks the reasoning shown, and waits for the student to revise. The student submits the chat link with the required summary or report.

Traditional alternative (no AI) · unpublished

The familiar way, one click away

The student does the work themselves and submits it, and the instructor grades it against the rubric. No AI required. It ships unpublished, opening with a one-line note to the instructor; publish it instead of the adaptive version if you prefer.

All 16 weeks

Every week, every component

Each week is a heading; every component under it links to the full student page. Week 8 is a teaching module that also carries the midterm bundle; Week 16 is the finals week, with the final exam bundle and no module.

Week 1

The Macro Perspective: Scarcity, the PPF, Circular Flow & Economic Models

what macroeconomics studies (aggregate output, the price level, unemployment, growth) versus microeconomics, and how economists model the whole economyscarcity, choice, and opportunity cost at any scale, from an evening's free time to a nation's capital goodsthe production possibilities frontier: endpoints, the slope as opportunity cost, points on, inside, and outside the frontier, the bowed-out shape, and the macro reading of an interior point as idle resourcesthe circular-flow model (households and firms in product and factor markets, with leakages and injections named) and positive vs. normative statements

Week 2

Measuring Output: Gross Domestic Product

gross domestic product and the expenditure approach GDP = C + I + G + NX, with NX = exports - importswhat counts and what does not: final goods and value added vs. intermediate goods, used goods, financial trades, and transfer paymentsreal vs. nominal GDP, and why a rise in nominal GDP is not a rise in outputthe GDP deflator = (nominal / real) x 100, equal to 100 in the base year, and the check (1 + real growth) x (1 + inflation) = (1 + nominal growth)

Week 3

Measuring Inflation & Unemployment

the Consumer Price Index as the cost of a fixed basket relative to a base year, and the inflation rate as the percentage change in the index (a level is not a rate)real vs. nominal values applied to a paycheck: real wage change is approximately the nominal raise minus inflationthe labor force, the unemployment rate, and the labor-force participation rate; who counts as unemployed and why discouraged workers are outside the labor forcethe three types of unemployment: frictional, structural, and cyclical

Week 4

Economic Growth & Productivity

long-run growth as the outward shift of the frontier; computing a growth rate as percentage change over the starting valuethe rule of 70: doubling time is approximately 70 divided by the growth rate, an approximation taught as one, and why small rate differences compound into huge gapsper-capita growth as total growth minus population growthproductivity and the sources of growth — physical capital, human capital, and technology — organized by the Solow growth model, named but not derived

Week 5

Aggregate Demand & Aggregate Supply

the AD-AS diagram and why aggregate demand slopes down: the wealth, interest-rate, and exchange-rate effects (not the micro substitution story)short-run aggregate supply (sticky prices, upward-sloping) vs. long-run aggregate supply (vertical at potential output)the shifters of AD (C, I, G, NX) and of SRAS (input costs, productivity, expected inflation)comparative statics: name the curve, name the direction, read the new price level and real output; a price-level change is a movement along a curve, never a shift

Week 6

Business Cycles & Short-Run Fluctuations

expansions, peaks, recessions, and troughs; potential output as the LRAS linerecessionary and inflationary gaps, in units and as a percentage of potential, and reading a gap off the AD-AS diagramthe role of expectations in why gaps persist, and how the NBER dates recessions versus the 'two negative quarters' rule of thumbself-correction vs. intervention, planted evenhandedly for the policy weeks

Week 7

Fiscal Policy

government spending and taxes; expansionary vs. contractionary fiscal policy and which way each shifts ADthe spending multiplier 1/(1 - MPC) and the tax multiplier -MPC/(1 - MPC), and why they are never the money multiplierautomatic stabilizers: taxes and transfers that move with the cycle without a new lawthe deficit as a flow and the debt as a stock; crowding out and lags presented fairly; the Keynesian case and the classical / monetarist case for caution at full strength

Week 8 Midterm

Midterm Review & Exam

cumulative review of Weeks 1 to 7 organized by the one calculation and the one curve each topic asks for: the PPF, GDP and the deflator, the CPI and the labor market, growth rates, AD-AS and gaps, fiscal policy and the multiplierthe flow-vs-stock habit: a deficit vs. the debt, investment vs. the capital stock, a year's inflation vs. the price level (light new material that bridges to the money and debt weeks)the midterm exam

The midterm exam bundle

Week 9

Money & the Banking System

the functions of money (medium of exchange, store of value, unit of account) and what money is not; the money supply as M1 and M2 vs. the monetary basefractional-reserve banking: a bank keeps the required reserves and lends the excess, and the loan becomes someone else's deposithow banks create money, traced one round at a time as a geometric seriesthe money multiplier 1/RR as the sum of the chain, and why it is an upper bound (excess reserves, the ample-reserves regime)

Week 10

The Federal Reserve & Monetary Policy

the Federal Reserve's structure and the dual mandate of maximum employment and stable prices, taught factually from the Fed's own descriptionthe policy tools and which way each moves the money supply: open-market operations, the discount rate, reserve requirements, and interest on reservesthe money market: money demand sloping down in the interest rate, money supply vertical at the quantity the Fed sets, and the equilibrium interest ratean interest-rate change is a movement along money demand; only income or the price level shifts it, and only the Fed's tools shift money supply

Week 11

Monetary Policy, Interest Rates & Aggregate Demand

the transmission mechanism as five links said in order: money supply, the interest rate, investment, the multiplier, and aggregate demandexpansionary monetary policy (buy bonds, money supply up, rate down, investment up, AD right, P and Y up) and contractionary policy as the same chain with every arrow reversedlags (inside and outside) and expectations as real-world complications, named factuallyfine-tuning vs. rules: the Keynesian case for active stabilization and the monetarist 'long and variable lags' critique, both at full strength

Week 12

Inflation, the Phillips Curve & Expectations

the short-run Phillips curve: lower unemployment with higher inflation along one curvethe long-run Phillips curve vertical at the natural rate; expected inflation shifts the short-run curve; the classic error of reading the short-run curve as a permanent menuthe quantity equation M x V = P x Q, velocity, and long-run monetary neutralitythe approximation inflation is about money growth minus output growth, labelled as an approximation

Week 13

International Trade & Comparative Advantage

absolute vs. comparative advantage, and the opportunity-cost table built one ratio at a timethe terms of trade and the mutually beneficial range; gains from trade proven with a before-and-after table in which both countries end with more of both goodsthe trade balance NX = X - IM, and a deficit described neutrally as imports exceeding exportstariffs and trade policy at the macro level: the case for freer trade and the case for protection at full strength, positive results apart from the normative trade-off

Week 14

Open-Economy Macro: Exchange Rates & the Balance of Payments

exchange rates as the price of one currency in another; appreciation vs. depreciationthe export/import price chain: an appreciating dollar makes exports pricier abroad and imports cheaper at home, so net exports fall; depreciation reverses every arrowthe foreign-exchange market described qualitatively: who demands dollars, who supplies them, and the drivers named factuallythe balance of payments: the current account and the financial account as mirror images, an accounting identity and not a verdict

Week 15

Macroeconomic Schools & Policy Debates

the Keynesian and classical / monetarist traditions as two readings of one toolkit: sticky vs. flexible prices, activism vs. rules, the preferred lever, and the named risks, in a table with each column at full weightthe agreed ground stated plainly: the long-run Phillips curve is vertical, sustained inflation is a monetary phenomenon in the long run, and the short run and the long run differthe debt-to-GDP and deficit-to-GDP ratios as the arithmetic both schools share; inflation targeting described factuallythe term's synthesis: a live policy question argued from both columns with no verdict, with the positive/normative line drawn on every claim; where the course has taken you

Week 16 · finals week Final

Finals week

No module this week: the final exam bundle