Instructor

Tara Shankar Shaw,Puja Padhi

Section

S3

Semester

Autumn ‘21

Course Difficulty

The premidsem part was of microeconomics while post midsem part was of macroeconomics. Neither of the parts had very complex concepts, following the lectures/learning from the reference book was quite easy.

Time Commitment Required

There were 3 lectures of 1 hour every week for Prof. Shaw. No extra effort was required apart from watching the lectures. (One could skip the lectures as well and simply read the ref. book Mankiw for both parts which covered majority of the course curriculum)

Grading Policy and Statistics

As there were multiple sections, I dont have the grading statistics

Attendance Policy

There was no mandatory attendance.

Pre-requisites

None. Some knowledge of finance/current affairs/economics would be a bonus as it would help you to connect the topics better.

Evaluation Scheme

Microeconomics :
20 mark quiz worth 10% of course
40 mark quiz worth 40% of course
Macroeconomics:
15 mark quiz worth 15%
35 mark quiz worth 35%

Topics Covered in the Course

The first half (microeconomics) started from the basic principles of economics, mainly covered concepts of supply and demand, invisible hand, and focused on decisions of individual firms. Production, competitive markets, monopolies were covered. A fairly quantitative rather than qualitative approach was taken in the entire course. In macroeconomics, supply and demand of market as a whole was studied as opposed to that of a single firm. Measuring national income (GDP, GNP etc.), cost of living (CPI, WPI), inflation, the monetary system, basic tools of finance were the main topics covered.

Teaching Style

3 lectures of 1 hr every week were taken by Prof. Shaw. At the end, some recorded videos were also posted to complete the curriculum. The prof encouraged discussion in the class even if it wasn’t strictly a part of the syllabus. Overall everything was taught very well by him.
Most lectures of Prof. Puja Padhi ended in 30-35 minutes. Too much terminology was introduced in the first few lectures which was difficult to follow. Slides were also not very useful and prof herself mentioned that the reference book was more important. There wasn’t a lot of discussion in the lectures although the prof tried to encourage it. The last few topics were taught well.

Tutorials/Assignments/Projects

There were none !

Feedback on Exams

Quiz 1 (Microeconomics) : Very straightforward, questions asked directly from lectures/reference book.

Midsem (Microeconomics) : Much tougher than the quiz, there were lots of numericals which required thorough understanding and application of concepts. Average was less than 50%. Previous year exams were very useful in the midsem, would strongly recommend to go through them.

Quiz 2 (Macroeconomics) : Fairly straightforward, reference book was more than enough.

Endsem (Macroeconomics) : Although there were a large no. of mcqs, they were fairly easy and reference book was sufficient.

Course Importance

Although it doesn’t help with future mech courses, it was a pretty interesting course. It gave me some insights into business decision making and some counterintuitive aspects of markets and economies.

References Used

For this course, Mankiw’s books for both micro and macro are extremely useful. Personally, I relied more on the books than the lectures, as the books also deliver the content in an interesting format with lots of real life examples.
For the micro exams, I would strongly suggest going through previous year exams and solutions.

Other Remarks

Contents of this course were not relevant to any of the fields (or to all of them if you think abt it :) ) so I have randomly marked “human health”. Don’t consider that as my response

Review By: Aum Samel