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Course syllabus

Principles of Macroeconomics — Syllabus

Principles of Macroeconomics Free sample edition

Principles of Macroeconomics is a 3-unit, lower-division undergraduate course offered at [Institution] in [Term]. The class meets in person twice a week for about 75 minutes each time: [Meeting days/times].

This syllabus is the governing document for the course. It tells you what the course is, how your grade is built, what happens each week, and the policies you can count on. Weeks are numbered from Week 1 to Week 16; your instructor's course site gives the due date for each item.

Instructor and Contact

  • Instructor: [Instructor name]
  • Contact: [Contact info]
  • Office hours: [Office hours]

Bring a specific question to office hours, such as a curve that keeps shifting the wrong way in your head or a deflator that will not come out to a clean number, and reach out early: a question asked in the week it comes up is far easier to answer than one saved for exam week. Check the course announcements at the start of each week.

Course Description

This is the one-semester survey of the economy as a whole, the macro half of the principles-of-economics sequence. It is taken by business, economics, finance, and accounting majors and by many students meeting a general-education requirement, and it has no economics prerequisite: you can take it before or after the micro half. It teaches the macro way of thinking: telling a flow from a stock, real from nominal, and the short run from the long run, and weighing the trade-offs every policy carries, with every claim run through a model you can draw and a number you can recompute.

The course moves in a clear arc: measurement before models, and models before policy. It opens with the macro perspective: scarcity and opportunity cost, the production possibilities frontier, the circular flow, and the line between positive and normative statements. It then measures the economy, with gross domestic product, the Consumer Price Index, inflation, and unemployment, and asks where long-run growth comes from. Next comes the aggregate-demand and aggregate-supply model, the business cycle, and fiscal policy, with the midterm as a checkpoint in Week 8. The second half takes up money and the banking system, the Federal Reserve and monetary policy, and the chain that carries a change in the money supply to interest rates, investment, and aggregate demand. It then turns to inflation, the Phillips curve, and the quantity equation, then to trade, comparative advantage, exchange rates, and the balance of payments, and it closes with the major schools of thought and the policy debates they drive.

Two habits carry the whole course. Every time you compute a measure, you show each step of the arithmetic on its own line and end with one plain sentence about what the result means for the economy. Every time you move a curve, you name the curve, name the direction, and say where the new price level, output, or interest rate lands, remembering that a change in the price level is a movement along a curve, never a shift of it. The worked examples use small, illustrative datasets built for this course, labelled as illustrative wherever they appear; any real figure comes with a link to the agency that publishes it.

This is an introductory course, not an intermediate one. The spending multiplier is taught as 1 ÷ (1 − MPC) with a note that taxes and imports make it smaller, and the money multiplier as 1 ÷ RR with the honest caveat that it is an upper bound. The AD–AS model is read off described graphs and one engineered pair of lines, not solved as a system of equations. The Solow growth model is named in the growth week but not derived, exchange rates stop at appreciation, depreciation, and their effect on net exports, and expectations are named as a force but never modeled.

A note on contested policy questions

Much of macroeconomics is settled ground, and the course states it plainly: real output and nominal output are different things, a deficit adds to the debt, and the long-run Phillips curve is vertical. Applied policy is another matter. Where economists disagree, the course presents the competing views at full strength, labels every claim as positive (what the model predicts) or normative (what someone thinks ought to be done), and prescribes no verdict.

  • Stimulus or restraint in a downturn. The Keynesian case: when prices and wages are slow to fall, an economy can stay stuck in a recessionary gap, idle workers and machines can be put back to work by added spending or tax cuts, and waiting leaves people out of work longer. The classical and monetarist case for caution: prices and wages adjust and the economy corrects itself over time, government borrowing can push up interest rates and crowd out private investment, the lags in passing and carrying out a fiscal plan can make the help land late, and every deficit adds to the debt.
  • Fine-tuning or rules for the central bank. The Keynesian case for activism: a central bank can move quickly, and leaning against a gap shortens the time people spend out of work. The monetarist critique, associated with Milton Friedman: monetary policy works with long and variable lags, so a move made now may land after the economy has turned, and a predictable rule announced in advance gives households and firms steadier expectations.
  • The deficit and the debt. One view treats a deficit in a slump as a tool and expects the debt-to-GDP ratio to fall again as output recovers. The other sees a rising ratio as a drag that crowds out investment and leaves a larger burden for future taxpayers. Both accept the arithmetic; they differ on how much weight each risk deserves.
  • Free trade or protection. The case for freer trade: specialization by comparative advantage raises total output, lowers prices, and widens choice. The case for protection: the gains are spread thin while the adjustment costs land hard on particular industries, regions, and workers, and some argue for protection on strategic or national-security grounds. That specialization raises total output is a positive result; how to weigh who bears the cost is a normative question.

No grade depends on which view you hold. Your grade depends on stating each side accurately, keeping the positive claim apart from the normative judgment, and supporting what you conclude.

Required Materials

You buy no textbook and pay nothing for course materials. Every reading and video is a link to an external resource, opened from the week's page so you always reach the version the course teaches from. Beyond a web browser, you need:

  • Desmos or a spreadsheet: the weekly Model Workshop runs in the free Desmos graphing calculator or in Google Sheets (or any free spreadsheet), with the exact entries spelled out step by step, such as two lines whose crossing you read, a market-basket table with a CPI cell, or a column of deposit rounds. A calculator, or pencil and paper, works for checking the arithmetic by hand.
  • Free public data pages: where a Workshop or a reading uses a real series, it links the agency page that publishes it, such as the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or the Federal Reserve. You open each one from its link; none costs anything.
  • A free account with one approved AI chatbot, from the list in the AI-Use Policy below. A free tier is enough for everything in this course, and every AI-based activity also has a route that needs no AI at all.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course you will be able to:

  • Outcome 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.
  • Outcome 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.

The eight course objectives below build toward those two outcomes. Each week's Start Here page names the objective that week serves and turns it into a short checklist of what you should be able to do by the end of the week.

  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).
  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.
  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.
  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.
  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.
  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).
  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.
  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.

How this course works

Every module presents the same content in three ways — a chapter to read, a slide deck with speaker notes, and captioned videos — so you can choose how to take it in. Each module's lecture page carries the week's explanation as one spoken-style walk-through as well.

A typical week runs in this order:

  1. Start Here. Open the week's module overview. It lists the week's items in order with time estimates and names the week's checkpoint, the one thing you should be able to do by the end of the week.
  2. Chapter (about 35 to 45 minutes). The week's primary reading. Read it first.
  3. Lecture page and slide deck (about 15 to 20 minutes for the lecture, plus time with the deck). The same ideas, explained aloud and in slides.
  4. Readings and videos. An optional go-deeper menu; every video has captions.
  5. Lecture tutorial (60 to 90 minutes). A one-on-one session with your chatbot that teaches, gives practice, and ends with a summary you submit.
  6. Practice set (about 20 minutes). Ungraded practice with a coach, at your own pace.
  7. Model Workshop (about 90 minutes). The week's model worked end to end: you set up the model in Desmos or a spreadsheet by following the listed steps, solve it, explain the result in plain words, and then catch and correct a slip your chatbot makes on the same problem.
  8. Discussion (about 45 minutes) and assignment (60 to 90 minutes). Where you put the week's ideas to work on a real question.
  9. Quiz. A short auto-graded check of what you now know, taken on your own.

Week 8 is lighter: the chapter, lecture, slides, readings, practice set, and discussion, then the study guide, exam-prep tutorial, practice exam, and midterm. Its one piece of new material is the flow-vs-stock habit: asking whether a number is an amount per year or an amount at a moment, which sorts a deficit from the debt and a year's inflation from the price level. Week 16 has no new module; it holds the final exam and its study guide, practice exam, and exam-prep tutorial.

Grading

Your course grade is the weighted average of the six groups below. The weights sum to 100%.

Grading weight by assessment group
Component Weight
Tutorials & Practice 10%
Quizzes 10%
Workshops 20%
Assignments 25%
Discussions 15%
Exams 20%
Total 100%

What each group holds

  • Tutorials & Practice: the 14 weekly lecture tutorials, 5 points each. The practice sets sit beside them and are ungraded.
  • Quizzes: 14 weekly quizzes, 10 points each, in every module except Week 8.
  • Workshops: the 14 weekly Model Workshops, 50 points each, in every module except Week 8.
  • Assignments: 14 weekly assignments, 100 points each, in every module except Week 8.
  • Discussions: 15 weekly discussions, 10 points each, one in every module from Week 1 to Week 15.
  • Exams: the midterm in Week 8 (50 points) and the cumulative final in Week 16 (100 points).

Each week's discussion and assignment ship in two versions. The adaptive version is published and graded by default. A traditional version that uses no AI is also in the module, unpublished; your instructor may publish it instead. An unpublished version does not appear to you and does not count. A published traditional version takes the adaptive one's place in the same group, for the same points.

Letter grades follow the standard scheme:

Letter grade by final course percentage
Letter Percentage range
A 90–100
B 80–89
C 70–79
D 60–69
F below 60

Weekly Schedule

The course runs for sixteen weeks: fifteen weeks of modules and a finals week. Every module from Week 1 to Week 15 holds the same materials: the Start Here page, the chapter, the lecture page (titled "Lecture:" followed by the module's title), the slide deck, the readings and videos page, and the practice set. Every module also ships both an adaptive discussion and a traditional no-AI alternative, and every module except Week 8 ships both an adaptive assignment and a traditional no-AI alternative. The adaptive versions are graded and published; the traditional alternatives are unpublished by default and count only if your instructor publishes them instead.

Weekly focus, lecture page, published graded work, and unpublished traditional alternatives by week
Week Focus Lecture page Graded and published Traditional alternative (unpublished)
1 The Macro Perspective: Scarcity, the PPF, Circular Flow & Economic Models Lecture: The Macro Perspective: Scarcity, the PPF, Circular Flow & Economic Models Tutorial, Model Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
2 Measuring Output: Gross Domestic Product Lecture: Measuring Output: Gross Domestic Product Tutorial, Model Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
3 Measuring Inflation & Unemployment Lecture: Measuring Inflation & Unemployment Tutorial, Model Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
4 Economic Growth & Productivity Lecture: Economic Growth & Productivity Tutorial, Model Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
5 Aggregate Demand & Aggregate Supply Lecture: Aggregate Demand & Aggregate Supply Tutorial, Model Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
6 Business Cycles & Short-Run Fluctuations Lecture: Business Cycles & Short-Run Fluctuations Tutorial, Model Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
7 Fiscal Policy Lecture: Fiscal Policy Tutorial, Model Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
8 Midterm Review & Exam Lecture: Midterm Review & Exam Adaptive discussion, midterm exam Discussion
9 Money & the Banking System Lecture: Money & the Banking System Tutorial, Model Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
10 The Federal Reserve & Monetary Policy Lecture: The Federal Reserve & Monetary Policy Tutorial, Model Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
11 Monetary Policy, Interest Rates & Aggregate Demand Lecture: Monetary Policy, Interest Rates & Aggregate Demand Tutorial, Model Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
12 Inflation, the Phillips Curve & Expectations Lecture: Inflation, the Phillips Curve & Expectations Tutorial, Model Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
13 International Trade & Comparative Advantage Lecture: International Trade & Comparative Advantage Tutorial, Model Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
14 Open-Economy Macro: Exchange Rates & the Balance of Payments Lecture: Open-Economy Macro: Exchange Rates & the Balance of Payments Tutorial, Model Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
15 Macroeconomic Schools & Policy Debates Lecture: Macroeconomic Schools & Policy Debates Tutorial, Model Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz Discussion, assignment
16 Finals week (no module) None Final exam None

The midterm in Week 8 covers Weeks 1 to 7, which is Objectives 1 to 6. The final in Week 16 is cumulative and draws on every course objective: the tools of macroeconomic modeling and the positive-normative line (Objective 1), GDP, real versus nominal, and the deflator (Objective 2), the CPI, inflation, and the labor market (Objective 3), long-run growth and the rule of 70 (Objective 4), the AD–AS model, the business cycle, and output gaps (Objective 5), fiscal policy, the multipliers, and the deficit and the debt (Objective 6), money, banking, the Federal Reserve, and monetary transmission (Objective 7), and the Phillips curve, the quantity equation, trade, exchange rates, and the schools of thought (Objective 8). Both exams come with a study guide, a practice exam, and an exam-prep tutorial you work with your chatbot.

Attendance and Participation

This course meets in person twice a week. Come to class having opened the week's Start Here page and read the chapter, because class time builds on that reading with described graphs, worked numbers, and questions. Your participation also shows in your weekly work: the tutorial, the Model Workshop, the discussion, the assignment, and the quiz. Each week builds on the measures and the models of the weeks before it (you cannot read the AD–AS diagram until real and nominal are second nature), so falling a week behind is the most common reason a grade slips; keep to the weekly rhythm and talk to your instructor the moment you feel lost. If you must miss class, follow the week's module from its Start Here page so you stay on pace.

Late Work

Late work loses 10% of the item's points for each day it is late. If something serious comes up, such as an illness or a family emergency, contact your instructor before the due date whenever you can so the two of you can agree on a fair plan. The penalty exists to keep the course moving, not to punish genuine hardship.

Academic Integrity

The work you submit must be your own, and you are bound by your institution's academic integrity standard. Do not copy another student's work, do not submit work you did not do, and do not misrepresent how a piece of work was produced. In a course built on models and numbers, integrity also means honest figures: every number in a Workshop or an assignment must be one the course supplied, one you computed and showed, or one from a real series whose link you give. Three violations matter most in this course: presenting an invented statistic or data figure as real, including one a chatbot supplied; fabricating or doctoring a chatbot conversation or its share link; and using AI on the quizzes, the midterm, or the final. Violations are handled under your institution's academic integrity process and may result in no credit for the item.

Accessibility and Disability

This course is designed to reflect universal-design principles and offers multiple means of representation, engagement, and expression. If you have a disability and need an accommodation, contact your institution's disability services office to arrange it, and let your instructor know so it can be put in place promptly. If any material is hard to use with your assistive technology, tell your instructor and an equivalent version will be provided. Every graph a question or a page refers to is described in words as well as drawn. This course is not yet accessibility-certified, and your feedback helps improve it. The course page Accessibility & Inclusion in Module 0 explains how the course offers multiple modes, how to turn on captions, and how to request an accommodation.

AI-Use Policy

This course uses an AI chatbot as a study partner, and then asks you to check its work against the model. Use any one of the approved chatbots: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, or Microsoft Copilot. Your instructor may edit this list. Free tiers are fine, and Copilot is often included with a campus Microsoft 365 account.

AI may be used on these activities:

  • Lecture tutorials (completed with a chatbot). Each week you work the tutorial in a conversation with an approved chatbot, then submit the conversation share link and your completion summary.
  • Practice sets (ungraded). You work the practice exercises with a chatbot coach.
  • Adaptive discussions (completed with a chatbot). You hold a real-time dialogue with an approved chatbot, then post the AI's summary with the conversation share link. This version does not require replies to classmates.
  • Adaptive assignments (AI-coached). You work the problems with a chatbot coach that scores your work against the assignment's rubric, then submit the self-scored report and the conversation share link.
  • Model Workshops (a required AI-critique step). After your own work, you ask your chatbot to solve or interpret the same problem, then catch, explain, and correct a slip in its answer by hand, such as reading a rise in nominal GDP as growth, using the money multiplier on a fiscal-policy question, shifting the wrong curve or in the wrong direction in the AD–AS model, drawing a price-level change as a shift instead of a movement along the curve, mixing up the legislature's fiscal tools with the central bank's monetary tools, or stating the inflation-unemployment trade-off backwards.
  • Exam-prep tutorials and studying. Use AI freely to review, to check your understanding, and to prepare for the exams.

AI may not be used on the quizzes, the midterm, and the final. These are closed to AI and must be entirely your own work, because they confirm that you personally can compute the measures, read the curves, and interpret the results.

A chatbot is not a source. It can explain a term or quiz you on a model, but it routinely uses the wrong multiplier, shifts the wrong curve or the wrong way, confuses real and nominal values, and reverses the inflation-unemployment trade-off, and it can state an official figure that no agency ever published. Every number, curve shift, and real-world figure you submit must trace to your own shown work, the course's illustrative datasets, or a linked agency source, checked by you.

If your instructor publishes a traditional alternative. A traditional discussion is your own post and your own replies to classmates; a traditional assignment is your own submitted work, graded by your instructor. AI may help you think, but you write and submit the work yourself.

Disclosure. The share link documents your AI use on the AI-based activities, so they need no separate note. For any other graded work where AI help is allowed, add one line naming the tool and how you used it.

Bring your own AI: access, cost, and privacy

  • Equity and a non-AI route. You never have to create an account with a chatbot company to complete this course or to reach any grade in it. Every AI-based activity in this course carries an Equivalent route (no AI required) on its own page. It assesses the same objectives, for the same points, against the same rubric. Take it whenever you like, for any reason or none; you do not have to ask permission, explain, or arrange it in advance.
  • Cost. A free tier of any approved chatbot covers everything in this course. No graded work depends on a paid subscription.
  • Privacy. Before you start, read what your chosen chatbot keeps of your conversations and how it uses them. Never paste personal information you would not want stored, such as your own pay, debts, or account details when a scenario reminds you of your budget, and remember that a share link lets anyone who has it read that conversation.

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