Macroeconomic Theory 2 ECON5160

  • Academic Session: 2025-26
  • School: Adam Smith Business School
  • Credits: 20
  • Level: Level 5 (SCQF level 11)
  • Typically Offered: Semester 2
  • Available to Visiting Students: No
  • Collaborative Online International Learning: No
  • Curriculum For Life: No

Short Description

This course exposes students to frontier macroeconomic theories that help them understand real-world phenomena relating to economic fluctuations, productivity and growth, monetary and fiscal policy, unemployment, and supply networks. These theories will be given rigorous foundations while developed in light of their practical applications and discussed in light of the understanding they offer us. Lecture material will be research driven, drawing on key literature to illustrate both the theory and its application. Through taking this course, students will learn how to rigorously formulate dynamic, stochastic, general equilibrium models, how to critically assess their strengths and weaknesses, how to apply these models to better understand the macro-economy, and how to employ these models in policy contexts.

Timetable

Synchronous:

Four hours of lectures per week, including time allocated to covering the answers to problem sets.

 

Asynchronous:

Problem sets (approximately 2 hours per week undertaken in groups) that will include both theoretical, derivational, and applied questions with the corresponding solution guides.

Requirements of Entry

Students must be registered on one of the associated programmes listed in this course specification.

Excluded Courses

None

Co-requisites

None

Assessment

ILO being assessed

Main Assessment In: April/May

Course Aims

This course aims to:

■ Expose students to the frontier macroeconomic theories that support a modern understanding of macroeconomic fluctuations, growth, and unemployment.

■ Equip students with the tools needed to rigorously formulate and analyse macroeconomic models.

■ Cultivate student's ability to critically evaluate a model's strengths and weaknesses in context.

Intended Learning Outcomes of Course

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

1. Rigorously formulate dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models.

2. Solve and analyse simple macroeconomic models in general equilibrium.

3. Critically assess macroeconomic theories and macroeconomic models in terms of their strengths and weakness.

4. Appropriately apply macroeconomic models to understand real-world phenomena.

Minimum Requirement for Award of Credits

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.