Two of the most concise definitions of economics are as follows: Economics is the study of production, consumption and allocation decisions under conditions of scarcity, or as economist Steven Landsburg says, “People respond to incentives.” Everything else is noise. Economics is usually broken down into two sub-disciplines:
Macroeconomics looks at the performance of the economy as a whole. Many macroeconomic issues appear in the news daily. Economic students study topics such as economic growth; inflation; changes in employment and unemployment, our trade performance with other countries and the relative success or failure of government economic policies and the policies made by the Federal Reserve.
Microeconomics looks at economics at the level of individual consumers, groups of consumers, or firms. The general concern of microeconomics is the efficient allocation of scarce resources between alternative uses. Microeconomics looks at the determination of price through the optimizing behavior of consumers and firms; with consumers seeking to maximize happiness and firms, profit.
|Selective Courses, choose a minimum of 12 units from the following:||Units|
|ACTG 121||Financial Accounting||4 units|
|ACTG 131||Managerial Accounting||4 units|
|ANTH 110||Cultural Anthropology||3 units|
|ECON 230||Economic History of the United States||3 units|
|HIST 101||History of Western Civilization II||3 units|
|HIST 201||U.S. History through 1877||3 units|
|HIST 202||U.S. History from 1877 to the Present||3 units|
|MATH 200||Elementary Probability and Statistics||4 units|
|MATH 241||Business Calculus I||5 units|
|MATH 251||Analytical Geometry and Calculus I||5 units|
|PHIL 100||Introduction to Philosophy||3 units|
|PSYC 100||General Psychology||3 units|
And required General Education coursework and electives as needed to meet the minimum
60 units required for the Associate degree.
Please refer to the AA/AS Degree Requirements for more information.