Economics

Week 1 — What Economics Is and Why It Matters

Students begin by exploring the meaning and purpose of economics. They learn that economics is about how people and societies make decisions when resources are limited. The week introduces scarcity, production, division of labor, and the importance of studying economics in everyday life.

Includes:
Reading lesson content, teacher-led instructional videos, vocabulary review, practice on economic resources, and introductory reflection.

Key focus:
Students understand that economics is not only about money. It is about choices, trade-offs, incentives, and the use of limited resources.

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Week 2 — Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Models, GDP, Globalization, and Graphs

Students learn the difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics. They compare monetary policy and fiscal policy and examine how economists use theories, models, and circular flow diagrams to explain economic activity. They also study GDP, globalization, functions, equations, and graphs used in economics.

Includes:
Practice on scarcity, economic goods, economic terminology, economic terms matching, mathematics in economics, reading graphs, and the assignment on the use of mathematics principles in economics.

Key focus:
Students learn how economists simplify complex systems using models, data, equations, and graphs.

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Week 3 — Budget Constraints, Opportunity Costs, and Marginal Utility

Students begin the unit on scarcity, demand, and supply. They learn how individuals make choices based on budget constraints. They calculate and graph budget constraints, explain opportunity sets and opportunity costs, and evaluate the law of diminishing marginal utility.

Includes:
Budget constraint activities, marginal utility analysis, graphing practice, and the budgeting assignment.

Key focus:
Students understand that every choice involves a cost and that rational decision-making often requires comparing benefits and trade-offs.

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Week 4 — Production Possibilities, Trade-Offs, and Economic Thinking

Students study the production possibilities frontier and social choices. They interpret production possibilities frontier graphs, compare budget constraints with production possibilities frontiers, examine diminishing returns, and distinguish between productive efficiency and allocative efficiency. They also evaluate objections to the economic approach and compare positive and normative statements.

Includes:
Practice on production terms, trade-off diagrams, statements practice, and the production possibilities assignment.

Key focus:
Students learn how individuals and societies make choices between competing uses of resources.

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Week 5 — Demand, Supply, Equilibrium, and Price Controls

Students study demand, quantity demanded, the law of demand, supply, quantity supplied, the law of supply, market equilibrium, equilibrium price, and equilibrium quantity. They then examine shifts in demand and supply, the four-step process for analyzing equilibrium changes, price ceilings, and price floors.

Includes:
Supply and demand practice, vocabulary matching, demand/supply/equilibrium assignment, price practice, and the quiz on scarcity, supply, and demand.

Key focus:
Students learn one of the most important frameworks in economics: how prices and quantities are determined by supply and demand.

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Week 6 — Labor Markets, Financial Markets, and Market Efficiency

Students begin examining how demand and supply operate in labor and financial markets. They compare consumer surplus, producer surplus, and social surplus. They explore why price floors and price ceilings can be inefficient, how technology affects labor markets, how minimum wage and living wage laws affect employment, and how interest rates affect supply and demand in financial markets.

Includes:
Economic terms matching, assignment on supply and demand curves and minimum wage, and introduction to labor and financial markets.

Key focus:
Students apply supply and demand to real-world markets for labor, money, borrowing, lending, and public debt.

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Week 7 — Price Controls, Market Information, and Elasticity

Students study the market system as an efficient mechanism for information. They learn how prices communicate information, how price controls affect equilibrium, and how elasticity measures responsiveness. They calculate price elasticity of demand and price elasticity of supply.

Includes:
Assignment on labor and financial markets, discussion on shifting demand and supply, and practice on what drives oil prices.

Key focus:
Students begin to understand that markets are dynamic systems where prices, quantities, and behavior respond to changing conditions.

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Week 8 — Elasticity, Pricing, Revenue, Taxes, and Real-World Applications

Students deepen their understanding of elasticity. They differentiate between infinite and zero elasticity, analyze constant unitary elasticity, and evaluate how elasticity affects revenue, demand, supply, and tax burden. They also calculate income elasticity of demand, cross-price elasticity of demand, labor supply elasticity, and savings elasticity.

Includes:
Elasticity practice, elasticity assignment, and quiz on labor markets and elasticity.

Key focus:
Students learn how elasticity helps explain pricing decisions, taxation, consumer behavior, and producer behavior.

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Week 9 — Consumer Choice, Utility, Behavioral Economics, and Indifference Curves

Students begin the unit on consumer choice, production, and competition. They learn how consumers make choices based on utility, marginal utility, income, prices, preferences, substitution effects, and income effects. They also study behavioral economics as an alternative framework and learn about intertemporal choices, saving behavior, and indifference curves.

Includes:
Utility vocabulary practice, vocabulary review, income practice, indifference curve practice, and the consumer choices assignment.

Key focus:
Students understand how consumers make decisions and why real human behavior may not always follow perfectly rational economic models.

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Week 10 — Costs, Production, Short Run, and Long Run

Students examine the producer side of economics. They learn the difference between explicit and implicit costs, accounting profit and economic profit, production functions, fixed and variable inputs, short-run and long-run production, total product, marginal product, diminishing marginal productivity, and short-run costs.

Includes:
Profits and costs practice, production practice, costs practice, curves practice, and the production costs assignment.

Key focus:
Students learn how firms think about cost, revenue, production, and profit.

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Week 11 — Perfect Competition and Firm Decisions

Students study perfectly competitive markets. They learn the characteristics of perfect competition, how firms react in the short run and long run, how firms calculate profits and losses, how to identify the shutdown point, and how firms decide whether to continue producing.

Includes:
Price practice, perfect competition practice, barriers practice, competition assignment, and quiz on choice, production, and competition.

Key focus:
Students understand how competition shapes firm behavior, prices, output, efficiency, and long-run profits.

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Week 12 — How Monopolies Form

Students begin the monopolies unit by studying barriers to entry. They learn the difference between natural monopolies and legal monopolies, examine economies of scale, control of natural resources, patents, trademarks, innovation, and predatory pricing.

Includes:
Monopoly practice, vocabulary review, examples of barriers to entry, and preparation for monopoly analysis.

Key focus:
Students understand why some markets become dominated by one firm and why monopolies raise questions about efficiency, fairness, and innovation.

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Week 13 — Monopoly Pricing, Output, and Efficiency

Students study how a profit-maximizing monopoly chooses output and price. They compare the demand curve of a perfectly competitive firm with that of a monopoly, analyze monopoly demand curves, calculate marginal revenue and marginal cost, and examine allocative efficiency in monopoly markets.

Includes:
Monopolies assignment and monopolies vocabulary practice.

Key focus:
Students learn how monopoly power affects pricing, output, consumer choice, and market efficiency.

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Week 14 — Monopolistic Competition, Oligopoly, and Game Theory

Students study monopolistic competition and oligopoly. They learn about differentiated products, advertising, entry, exit, efficiency, collusion, competition, and the prisoner’s dilemma. This week helps students understand markets where firms are not pure monopolies but also not perfectly competitive.

Includes:
Monopolistic competition practice and oligopoly vocabulary practice.

Key focus:
Students learn how firms behave when they have some market power and must respond strategically to competitors.

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Week 15 — Corporate Mergers, Antitrust, Regulation, and Deregulation

Students examine corporate mergers, antitrust law, concentration ratios, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, restrictive practices, tying sales, bundling, predatory pricing, natural monopoly regulation, cost-plus regulation, price cap regulation, deregulation, and regulatory capture.

Includes:
Corporate mergers practice, antitrust practice, regulating natural monopolies practice, monopoly and antitrust policy assignment, mergers and acquisitions practice, and quiz on monopolies.

Key focus:
Students understand how governments try to regulate market power and protect competition.

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Week 16 — Labor Markets, Wages, Employment, Unions, and Discrimination

Students begin the final content unit by studying labor markets. They learn about labor demand in competitive and imperfectly competitive output markets, wage determination, monopsony power, unions, union membership, wage arguments, declining union membership, employment discrimination, earnings gaps, and policies designed to reduce discrimination.

Includes:
Labor market analysis, union evaluation, discrimination analysis, and the assignment on labor, unions, and discrimination.

Key focus:
Students understand how wages and employment are shaped by markets, power, policy, institutions, and discrimination.

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Week 17 — Poverty, Safety Net, Income Inequality, and Government Policy

Students study poverty, the poverty line, the poverty trap, government programs, the safety net, income distribution, income inequality, quintiles, Lorenz curves, and policies designed to reduce inequality. They evaluate arguments for and against government intervention and examine the trade-off between incentives and income equality.

Includes:
Assistance review practice, poverty and safety net assignment, income inequality terms practice, labor incentives and government programs assignment, and quiz on income and inequalities.

Key focus:
Students connect economic theory to social realities, including poverty, inequality, public assistance, and policy design.

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Week 18 — Final Review, Study Skills, and Semester Exam

Students complete the final review and prepare for the semester exam. They create a study plan, learn tips for improving concentration, review strategies for multiple-choice, true-false, and short-answer questions, and examine why studying over time is more effective than cramming.

Includes:
Study plan, concentration strategies, question-type review, brain-based learning, and final exam.

Key focus:
Students consolidate the full semester and demonstrate mastery of economics concepts through the final exam.

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Overall 18-Week Learning Arc

Across 18 weeks, students move from basic economic thinking to more advanced analysis of markets, firms, labor, inequality, and policy.

They first learn what economics is and why scarcity matters.
Then they study how supply, demand, and prices work.
Next, they examine labor markets, financial markets, and elasticity.
Then they analyze consumer choice, production, and competition.
After that, they study monopoly power, oligopoly, antitrust, and regulation.
Finally, they examine wages, labor markets, poverty, income inequality, and government policy.

By the end of the course, students should be able to use economic thinking to understand real-life decisions, market behavior, business strategy, public policy, and social challenges.

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Students are assessed through quizzes, tests, assignments, discussions, participation, and a final exam. Assignments may include practice worksheets, written responses, budgeting activities, graphing tasks, economic analysis questions, discussions, and applications of economic concepts to real-world situations. The grading structure places 30% on quizzes and tests, 50% on assignments, presentations, labs, essays, discussions, and participation, and 20% on the course final.

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Examples of course assignments include:

Economic Resources practice
Scarcity practice
Economic goods and terminology practice
Mathematics in economics assignment
Budgeting assignment
Production possibilities assignment
Supply and demand practice
Demand, supply, equilibrium, and four-step process assignment
Minimum wage and labor market assignment
Labor and financial markets assignment
Elasticity assignment
Consumer choices assignment
Production costs assignment
Competition assignment
Monopolies assignment
Monopoly and antitrust policy assignment
Labor, unions, and discrimination assignment
Poverty and safety net assignment
Labor incentives and government programs assignment
Final exam preparation and study plan

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Ελληνικά
Οι μαθητές αξιολογούνται μέσα από κουίζ, τεστ, εργασίες, συζητήσεις, συμμετοχή και τελική εξέταση. Οι εργασίες μπορεί να περιλαμβάνουν φύλλα πρακτικής, γραπτές απαντήσεις, δραστηριότητες προϋπολογισμού, ασκήσεις γραφημάτων, ερωτήσεις οικονομικής ανάλυσης, συζητήσεις και εφαρμογές οικονομικών εννοιών σε πραγματικές καταστάσεις. Η βαθμολογική δομή βασίζεται κατά 30% σε κουίζ και τεστ, κατά 50% σε εργασίες, παρουσιάσεις, εργαστηριακές δραστηριότητες, essays, συζητήσεις και συμμετοχή, και κατά 20% στην τελική εξέταση.

Παραδείγματα εργασιών του μαθήματος περιλαμβάνουν:

Πρακτική στους οικονομικούς πόρους
Πρακτική στη σπανιότητα
Πρακτική στα οικονομικά αγαθά και στην ορολογία
Εργασία μαθηματικών στα οικονομικά
Εργασία προϋπολογισμού
Εργασία παραγωγικών δυνατοτήτων
Πρακτική στην προσφορά και ζήτηση
Εργασία ζήτησης, προσφοράς, ισορροπίας και τετραβηματικής διαδικασίας
Εργασία κατώτατου μισθού και αγοράς εργασίας
Εργασία αγορών εργασίας και χρηματοοικονομικών αγορών
Εργασία ελαστικότητας
Εργασία επιλογών καταναλωτή
Εργασία κόστους παραγωγής
Εργασία ανταγωνισμού
Εργασία μονοπωλίων
Εργασία μονοπωλίου και αντιμονοπωλιακής πολιτικής
Εργασία εργασίας, συνδικάτων και διακρίσεων
Εργασία φτώχειας και κοινωνικού διχτυού προστασίας
Εργασία κινήτρων εργασίας και κυβερνητικών προγραμμάτων
Προετοιμασία και πλάνο μελέτης για την τελική εξέταση

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Through this course, students develop:

Economic reasoning
Critical thinking and analysis
Mathematical interpretation
Graph reading and graph creation
Understanding of supply and demand
Budgeting and opportunity-cost analysis
Decision-making under constraints
Market analysis
Understanding of labor and financial markets
Understanding of competition, monopoly, and regulation
Evaluation of public policy
Data interpretation
Written explanation and argumentation
Discussion and participation skills
Ethical awareness around inequality, poverty, and economic decision-making

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Ελληνικά
Μέσα από το μάθημα, οι μαθητές αναπτύσσουν:

Οικονομική σκέψη
Κριτική σκέψη και ανάλυση
Μαθηματική ερμηνεία
Ανάγνωση και δημιουργία γραφημάτων
Κατανόηση προσφοράς και ζήτησης
Ανάλυση προϋπολογισμού και κόστους ευκαιρίας
Λήψη αποφάσεων υπό περιορισμούς
Ανάλυση αγορών
Κατανόηση αγορών εργασίας και χρηματοοικονομικών αγορών
Κατανόηση ανταγωνισμού, μονοπωλίου και ρύθμισης
Αξιολόγηση δημόσιας πολιτικής
Ερμηνεία δεδομένων
Γραπτή επιχειρηματολογία και ανάλυση
Δεξιότητες συζήτησης και συμμετοχής
Ηθική ευαισθησία γύρω από την ανισότητα, τη φτώχεια και τις οικονομικές αποφάσεις

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By the end of the course, students will be able to:

Explain why economics matters in everyday life
Understand scarcity, limited resources, and unlimited wants and needs
Compare microeconomics and macroeconomics
Interpret economic models, theories, equations, and graphs
Explain GDP and globalization
Analyze budget constraints, opportunity costs, and trade-offs
Explain demand, supply, equilibrium, and market shifts
Understand price ceilings, price floors, and market efficiency
Analyze labor markets and financial markets
Calculate and interpret elasticity
Explain consumer utility and decision-making
Understand production costs, short-run production, and long-run production
Explain perfect competition and how firms make output decisions
Analyze monopolies, oligopolies, mergers, antitrust policy, and regulation
Evaluate labor markets, wages, unions, discrimination, poverty, and inequality
Understand the role of government policy in reducing or managing inequality
Develop stronger study habits for final exam preparation

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Ελληνικά
Με την ολοκλήρωση του μαθήματος, οι μαθητές θα μπορούν να:

Εξηγούν γιατί τα οικονομικά είναι σημαντικά στην καθημερινή ζωή
Κατανοούν τη σπανιότητα, τους περιορισμένους πόρους και τις απεριόριστες ανάγκες και επιθυμίες
Συγκρίνουν τη μικροοικονομία και τη μακροοικονομία
Ερμηνεύουν οικονομικά μοντέλα, θεωρίες, εξισώσεις και γραφήματα
Εξηγούν το ΑΕΠ και την παγκοσμιοποίηση
Αναλύουν περιορισμούς προϋπολογισμού, κόστος ευκαιρίας και συμβιβασμούς
Εξηγούν τη ζήτηση, την προσφορά, την ισορροπία και τις μετατοπίσεις της αγοράς
Κατανοούν ανώτατα και κατώτατα όρια τιμών και την αποτελεσματικότητα της αγοράς
Αναλύουν αγορές εργασίας και χρηματοοικονομικές αγορές
Υπολογίζουν και ερμηνεύουν την ελαστικότητα
Εξηγούν τη χρησιμότητα και τη λήψη αποφάσεων των καταναλωτών
Κατανοούν το κόστος παραγωγής, τη βραχυχρόνια και μακροχρόνια παραγωγή
Εξηγούν τον τέλειο ανταγωνισμό και πώς οι επιχειρήσεις λαμβάνουν αποφάσεις παραγωγής
Αναλύουν μονοπώλια, ολιγοπώλια, συγχωνεύσεις, αντιμονοπωλιακή πολιτική και ρύθμιση
Αξιολογούν αγορές εργασίας, μισθούς, συνδικάτα, διακρίσεις, φτώχεια και ανισότητα
Κατανοούν τον ρόλο της κυβερνητικής πολιτικής στη μείωση ή διαχείριση της ανισότητας
Αναπτύσσουν καλύτερες συνήθειες μελέτης για την τελική εξέταση

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