Economics

Code:

L.EGI010

Acronym:

E

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
OFICIAL	Economics and Management

Instance: 2024/2025 - 2S

Active?	Yes
Responsible unit:	Department of Industrial Engineering and Management
Course/CS Responsible:	Bachelor in Industrial Engineering and Management

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
L.EGI	134	Syllabus	1	-	6	52	162

Teaching language

Portuguese

Objectives

Upon completing this curricular unit, the students shuold be able to:

• Think like econonists


• Identify opportunity costs


• Acknowledge the impact the economy has on the operation of companies


• Understand how the economy works (consumers, firms and Government) from a microeconomic perspective


• Understand how the economy works from a macroecononic perspective (macroeconomic aggregates, price level, inflation, interest rates, economic growth, etc.)


• Critically assess news articles that involve economic concepts

Learning outcomes and competences

We hope this curricular unit will help developing and enhancing competences in four dimensions:

1. Disciplinary knowledge and reasoning


2. Personal and professional skills and attributes


3. Interpersonnal skills: teamwork and communication


4. Conceiving, designing, implementing, and operating systems in the enterprise, societal and environmental context

More specifically, we hope students will be able to work on the following competences (following CDIOs 2.0 framework of learning outcomes):

1.1 Knowledge of underlying mathematics and science
1.2 Core engineering fundamental knowledge

2.1 Engineering reasoning and problem solving
2.2 Experimentation, investigation and knowledge discovery
2.3 Systems thinking
2.4/2.5 Attitudes, ethics, equity and other social responsibilities

3.1 External, societal and environmental context
3.2 Enterprise and business context
3.3 Conceiving, systems engineering and management

Working method

Presencial

Program

1. 10 principles of economics

• How do people decide?
• Why do people interact?
• How does the economy work?

2. Thinlink like an economist

• The economist as scientist
• The economist as policy advisor
• Why do economists disagree
• Microeconomics vs Macroeconomics

3. Microeconomics The market forces: supply and demand

  3.1. Consumer theory

• Preferences
• Utility
• Marginal utility
• Indifference curves and budget restriction
• Maximization of the consumer's utility

  3.2. Producer theory

• Production function
• Production factors
• Total production, marginal production and fixed factors
• Marginal productivity
• Isocosts and isoquant curves
• Profit maximization

4. Microeconomics Production costs

• What are costs?
• Opportunity costs
• Cost of capital
• Economic profit vs accounting profit
• Variable and fixed costs
• Average and marginal costs
• Costs in the short- and long-run

5. Microeconomics Market structures and equilibrium

  5.1. Perfect and imperfect market structures

• What is a market?
• Market power
• Concentration measures
• Instability measures

  5.2. Perfect competition

• Definition of perfectly competitive markets
• Properties of a perfectly competitive market
• Profit maximization
• Decision to close the firm
• Firm supply curve in the short and in the long run
• Equilibrium in the short and in the long run
• Producer and consumer economic surplus

  5.3. Monopoly

• Definition
• Properties of a monopolistic market
• Barriers to entry
• Monopoly vs perfect competition
• Profit maximization in monopolies
• Equilibrium in monopolies
• Social welfare in monopolies

6. Macroeconomics National accounting and the price level

• GDP and its components
• GDP approaches: production, expenditure and income
• Nominal GDP vs Real GDP
• Price level indexes (Paasch and Laspayres)
• GDP deflator

7. Macroeconomics Economic growth in the long-run

• Productivity and its determinants
• Production function
• Solow model
• Savings = Investment
• Technological progress and human capital

8. Macroeconomics The monetary and banking system

• What is a currency?
• The function of banks
• The Central Bank
• The monetary market
• Theories of inflation
• Interest rates

Mandatory literature

N. Gregory Mankiw; Economics. ISBN: 9781473786981

Complementary Bibliography

Olivier Blanchard, Alessia Amighini, Francesco Giavazzi; Macroeconomics - A European Perspective, Pearson, 2017. ISBN: 978-1-292-08567-8
Barbot, Cristina; Microeconomia. ISBN: 972-8298-51-X

Teaching methods and learning activities

Theoretical concepts will be taught in lectures. Cases discussion and exercises will be solved in practical classes.

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation without final exam

Assessment Components

Designation	Weight (%)
Teste	100,00
Total:	100,00

Amount of time allocated to each course unit

Designation	Time (hours)
Estudo autónomo	110,00
Frequência das aulas	52,00
Total:	162,00

Eligibility for exams

Missing components are assigned 0 (zero) values.

In order to attend this curricular unit, students must fulfil their attendance in theoretical-practical classes (in accordance with Art. 6, 6.3 of FEUP's specific student assessment regulations).

Calculation formula of final grade

3 tests, where the best two will count 40% each and the worst will count 20%.

Final grade: 40% x 1st best test + 40% x 2nd best test + 20% x worst test

Failure to pass the distributed assessment component implies that the student will have to go to the Resit period, in which the exam will be global (covering all the topics) and will count 100%.

Special assessment (TE, DA, ...)

100% Exam

Classification improvement

100% Exam