Eastern Michigan University
College of Arts and Sciences

NCSS/Social Studies

XI. Matrix

• Productive resources are limited.  Therefore, people cannot have all the goods and services that they want; as a result, they must choose some things and give up others.
• Effective decision making requires comparing the additional costs of alternatives with the additional benefits.  Most choices involve doing a little more or a little less of something; few choices are all or nothing decisions.
• Different methods can be used to allocate goods and services.  People, acting individually or collectively through government, must choose which methods to use to allocate different kinds of goods and services.
• People respond predictably to positive and negative incentives.
• Voluntary exchange occurs only when all parties expect to gain.  This is true for trade among individuals or organizations within a nation, or among individuals or organizations in different nations.
• When individuals, regions, and nations specialize in what they can produce at the lowest cost and then trade with others, both production and consumption increase.
• Markets exist when buyers and sellers interact.  This interaction determines market prices and thereby allocates scarce goods and services.
• Prices send signals and provide incentives to buyers and sellers.  When supply and demand change, market prices adjust, affecting incentives.
• Competition among sellers lowers costs and prices, encouraging producers to produce more of what consumers are willing and able to buy.  Competition among buyers increases prices and allocates goods and services to those people who are willing and able to pay the most for them.
• Institutions evolve in market economies to help individuals and groups accomplish their goals.  Banks, labor unions, corporations, legal systems, and not-for-profit organizations are examples of important institutions.  A different kind of institution, clearly defined and enforced property rights, is essential to a market economy.
• Money makes it easier to trade, borrow, save, invest, and compare the value of goods and services.
• Income for most people is determined by the market value of the productive resources they sell.  What workers earn depends, primarily, on the market value of what they produce and how productive they are.
• Entrepreneurs are people who take the risks of organizing productive resources to make goods and services.  Profit is an important incentive that leads entrepreneurs to accept the risks of business failure.
• Investment in factories, machinery, new technology, and in health, education, and training of people can raise future standards of living.
• There is an economic role for government to play in a market economy whenever the benefits of a government policy outweigh its costs.  Governments often provide for national defense, address environmental concerns, define and protect property rights, and attempt to make markets more competitive.  Most governments also redistribute income.
• Costs of government policies sometimes exceed benefits.  This may occur because of incentives facing voters, government officials, and the government employees; because of actions by special interest groups that can impose costs on the general public; or because social goals other than economic efficiency are being pursued.
• A nation’s overall levels of income, employment, and prices are determined by the interaction of spending and production decisions made by all households, firms, government agencies, and others in the economy.
• Unemployment imposes costs on individuals and nations.  Unexpected inflation imposes costs on many people and benefits some others because it arbitrarily redistributes purchasing power.  Inflation can reduce the rate of growth of national living standards because individuals and organizations use resources to protect themselves against the uncertainty of future prices.
• In the United States, federal government budgetary policy and the Federal Reserve System’s monetary policy influence the overall levels of employment, output, and prices.

All students in the economics program complete 30 credits in economics courses, plus at least one college level math class, for a total of 33 credits.  These include required coursework in economic theory and statistical methods, and electives in economics applications.  In addition all students complete a class in Social Studies teaching methods, HIST 481, in which their lesson preparation instruction focuses on economics content.

I. Required Courses:    

ECON 201, Principles of Economics I

ECON 202, Principles of Economics II.

ECON 301, Intermediate Macroeconomics

ECON 302, Intermediate Microeconomics

ECON 310, Economics Statistics

II. Elective Courses:     

(Courses typically selected by education students)

ECON 300, Contemporary Economic Issues

ECON 340, Money and Banking

ECON 328, Economics of Women

ECON 375, U.S. Economic History

ECON 385, Economic Development

ECON 480, International Economics

These classes meet NCSS standards in the following ways:

ECON 201 has the following course goals and objectives for all instructors: 

1. The course introduces students to basic macroeconomic concepts and tools of analysis. Important among the tools are various economic models. Additionally, it should help students better understand and critically evaluate national macroeconomic policy.

2. Define basic economic concepts and illustrate their use.

3. Identify, illustrate, and provide practice in the use of basic macroeconomic models. Elementary algebra is used. Among models explored are:

a) The production possibilities frontier,

b)  The market

c)   The Keynesian model of national income determination

d)  Aggregate expenditure

e)  Multiplier

f)  Aggregate Supply-Aggregate demand

g) The creation of money

h) The money market

i) Monetarism

j) International economic relations

4. Indicate differences of opinion within economics about using models.

5. Identify:

a) Macroeconomic policy goals of the government

b) Methods of achieving those goals, and

c) Differences of opinion about appropriate goals and policy

6. Apply economic concepts and models to better understand selected current events.

ECON 202 has the following goals and objectives:

1. To introduce students to basic microeconomic concepts and tools of analysis.

2. Students will learn a set of concepts, which comprise a valuable kit of analytical tools to understand, predict and forecast individual decision behavior.

3. The individual decision-making units studied are consumers, producers, and resource owners.

4. The course also introduces students to the interaction of these agents in a market setting, and the social outcomes of these interactions.

ECON 301 has the following goals and objectives:

1. To examine macroeconomic measurement, and macroeconomic problems and goals.

2. Study the Classical models of full-employment and variable price macroeconomics and money.

3. Explain the Keynesian models of variable output, unemployment, and sticky prices.

4. Understand the role of fiscal and monetary policy in the Keynesian and Classical models:  The IS-LM, AS-AD framework.

5. To learn Keynesian and Classical views of trade-offs between inflation and unemployment: the Phillips Curve.

6. Understanding the new directions in the search to explain macroeconomic behavior will be studied.

7. Analysis of theory of practice in using monetary and fiscal policies to achieve macroeconomic goals.

8. Closer looks at international economics, economic growth, consumption and investment, and money market.

9. Applying theory to analyze current and perspective macroeconomic performance and policies.

ECON 302 has the following goals and objectives:

1. Students will be able to describe and analyze the competitive economic market.

2. Students will be able to describe and analyze the consumer model, in particular utility functions and indifference curves, budget constraints, factors influencing the demand for commodities, factors influencing the supply of labor and other inputs.

3.  Students will be able to describe and apply the theory of the firm, in particular production, costs of production, product supply and input demand.

4. Students will be able to describe market structures; in addition to the competitive market the following are explored: monopolistic markets, oligopolistic markets, and monopolistic competition.

5. Students will be familiar with Game theory.

6. Students will be able to describe and analyze efficiency and equity as goals regulating the evaluation of policy in market economies.

ECON 310 has the following goals and objectives: Students will be able to describe, apply and analyze the following:

1. Descriptive statistics: frequency tables and graphs, center of a distribution, spread of a distribution, statistics by computer, linear transformations.

2. Probability: probability models, compound events, conditional probability, independence, Bayes Theorem.

3. Probability Distribution: discrete random variables, mean and variance, the Binomial distributions, the Normal distribution, Function of a random variables.

4. Two Random Variables: Distributions, function of two random variables, covariance, linear combination of two random variables.

5. Sampling: random sampling, moments of the sample mean, the shape of the sampling distribution, proportion distributions.

6. Confidence Intervals: simple mean, small-sample, difference in two means (independence samples), difference in two means (matched samples), proportions.

7.  Hypothesis Testing: Classical test, P-value, B-error.

8. Linear Regression: fitting a line, simple regression, multiple regression.

2.4.2 Test Evidence

Majors in Economics have passed the Michigan Test for Teacher Certification at a rate of 93% over the past four years. The state-wide average has been 75% during this period.

MTTC Objectives for each subject test are listed in the Appendix.

All HIST 481 students must complete a lesson in economics as part of the unit. This lesson is assessed for their ability to offer meaningful instruction in this area to their students.

The following rubric is used to assess student use of economics concepts in their unit:

Rubrics for unit in HIST 481

Students in the winter HIST 481 scored 94% on this assessment of Economics in their units.

A sample of student units developed during student teaching were assessed in Winter 2002 to assess overall student ability to apply the ten strands to design and implementation of units in the classroom. The rubric used was the same as the one above used for assessment of unit design in HIST 481. In this sample, students scored 100% in this discipline.