Economics U$A

Course Description:
Economics U$A is a comprehensive telecourse in macroeconomics and microeconomics designed to address the sharply increasing demand for quality college economics courses in this critical field of study. The series is an absorbing documentary examination of major historic and contemporary events that have shaped 20th century American economics. Through the use of interviews, commentary and analysis, the series establishes a clear relationship between abstract economic principles and concrete human experience.

Topics include resources and scarcity, markets and prices, booms and busts, fiscal policy, inflation, supply and demand, profits and interests, exchange rates, and more.

The course programs are hosted by former CBS and ABC network correspondent David Schoumacher and Richard T. Gill, former Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Economics U$A can be offered as either a one-semester survey course in economic principles or, with the addition of the audiocassettes , as a two-semester macro- and microeconomics course sequence.

Program Descriptions

*Indicates program updated in 1992 to ensure case studies/commentaries reflect recent national and international economic issues.

101) Resources and Scarcity: What is Economics All About?
Investigates how America has faced important economic tradeoffs in areas of wilderness preservation, worker health protection, and war production.

102) Markets and Prices: Do They Meet Our Needs?
An examination of America's free-market pricing system under the powerful forces of supply and demand.

103) U.S. Economic Growth: What is the Gross National Product?
The real story behind the numbers. The birth of GNP - its greatest achievement and its most important failure.

104) Booms and Busts: What Causes the Business Cycle?
Good times followed by bad times. America's roller coaster economy is explained.

105) John Maynard Keynes: What Did We Learn from the Great Depression?
An introduction to Keynesian Economics and the secret to ending the Great Depression.

106) Fiscal Policy: Can We Control the Economy?
An examination of government, taxing, and spending policies.

107) Inflation: How Did the Spiral Begin?
Vietnam and The Great Society. Their impact on inflation and why it is so hard to control.

108) The Banking System: Why Must it Be Protected?*
An investigation of the significance and vulnerability of America's banking system.

109) The Federal Reserve: Does Money Matter?
The rise of monetary policy. Government's second weapon in its arsenal of economic controls.

110) Stagflation: Why Couldn't We Beat it?
Government's failure to beat the high unemployment and high inflation of the 1970s is revealed.

111) Productivity: Can We Get More For Less?
The cause of America's great productivity slide is examined as well as the solutions suggested by supply-side economists.

112) Federal Deficits: Can We Live with Them?*
A revealing examination of the good, the bad and the ugly side of deficits.

113) Monetary Policy: How Well Does it Work?
Case studies of three Federal Reserve chairman as they attempt to fight inflation, and unemployment through the application of monetary policy.

114) Stabilization Policy: Are We Still in Control?
Attempts to examine and assess, from different perspectives, the future of government's involvement in the economy.

Microeconomics

115) The Firm: How Can it Keep Costs Down?
An investigation into the economic factors behind Coke's secret formula change and the phenomenal success of the "Asbury Park Press."

116) Supply and Demand: What Sets the Price?
The potent forces of supply and demand are revealed through the great California drought, the Arab oil embargo and the designer jeans craze.

117) Perfect Competition and Inelastic Demand: Can the Farmer Make a Profit?
The inside story of America's farm problem - from the 20s to the 80s.

118) Economic Efficiency: What Price Controls?
A demonstration of the effects of wage, prices and rent controls in the free market economy.

119) Monopoly: Who's in Control?
The stories of Standard Oil, AT&T, and Kodak demonstrate the power and importance of monopolies.

120) ) Oligopolies: Whatever Happened to Price Competition?*
Investigates the ways and means of big business as they attempt to avoid price competition.

121) Pollution: How Much is a Clean Environment Worth?
An examination of problems behind private industry and government's attempt to clean up the environment.

122) Labor and Management: How Do They Come to Terms?
The change in labor movement relations from the turn of the century to the 1980s.

123) Profits and Interest: Where is the Best Return?
An investigation into how banks, big business and little entrepreneurs act to maximize profit.Reducing Poverty: What Have We Done?

124) Reducing Poverty: What Have We Done?
Investigates the social security, family assistance and job corps programs.

125) Economic Growth: Can We Keep Up the Pace?
The factors behind America's phenomenal economic growth.

126) Public Goods and Responsibilities: How Far Should We Go?
TVA, national health care and California's tax revolt demonstrate the role of government in our lives.

127) International Trade: For Whose Benefit?
Investigates the benefits of free trade to society in general, and the problems and justifications for trying to restrict international trade.

128) Exchange Rates: What In the World is a Dollar Worth?*
The effect of fixed and floating exchange rates on America's domestic and international economy.

*Updated in 1992 to ensure case studies/commentaries reflect current national and international economic issues.

For more information: E-Mail: learning@unctv.org