Energy policy is typically evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary. We can look to historical policies to understand how we've inherited the policies governing our energy use today. But looking backward only tells us part of the story. In the face of climate change, we need to look ahead and instead envision a more revolutionary change to our energy systems and the policies that govern them. This class takes you on that journey to energy policies past, present, and future. We look at the political realities of addressing climate change at various scales of governance and work together to craft our own ideal scenarios of what a responsible energy future will be.

This course is an advanced course in macroeconomics that seeks to bring students to the research frontier. The course is divided into two sections. The first half is taught by Prof. Iv‡n Werning and covers topics such as how to formulate and solve optimal problems. Students will study fiscal and monetary policy, among other issues. The second half, taught by Prof. George-Marios Angeletos, covers recent work on multiple equilibria, global games, and informational fictions.

Topics change from year to year. Most recent topics include: optimal fiscal and monetary policy; optimal capital taxation; time inconsistency and incentive incompatibility of optimal policies; redistribution and political economics; heterogeneous agents and incomplete markets; Real Business Cycle models and new-keynesian models; endogenous growth; aggregate fluctuations and propagation mechanisms; recursive methods and robust control in macro.

This book has been prepared for students taking Agribusiness Management 101 in The Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology and Education at The Pennsylvania State University.

Table of Contents:

Lesson 1: Economics as Limits, Alternatives, and Choices
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 1.1 - What Is Economics, and Why Is It Important?
Chapter 1.2 - Confronting Objections to the Economic Approach
Chapter 1.3 - How Individuals Make Choices Based on Their Budget Constraint

Lesson 2: The Market System
Chapter 2: Introduction
Chapter 2.1 - How To Organize Economies: An Overview of Economic Systems
Chapter 2.2 - Introducing the Market System
Chapter 2.3 - The Use of Mathematics in Principles of Economics

Lesson 3: Demand, Supply, and Market Equilibrium Chapter 3
Chapter 3: Introduction
Chapter 3.1 - Demand, Supply, and Equilibrium in Markets for Goods and Services
Chapter 3.2 - Shifts in Demand and Supply for Goods and Services
Chapter 3.3 - Changes in Equilibrium Price and Quantity: The Four-Step Process
Chapter 3.4 - Price Ceilings and Price Floors
Chapter 3.5 - Demand, Supply, and Efficiency

Lesson 4: Market Failures: Public Goods and Externalities
Chapter 4: Introduction
Chapter 4.1 - Why the Private Sector Underinvests in Innovation
Chapter 4.2 - How Governments Can Encourage Innovation
Chapter 4.3 - Public Goods

Lesson 5: Elasticity
Chapter 5: Introduction
Chapter 5.1 - Price Elasticity of Demand and Price Elasticity of Supply
Chapter 5.2 - Polar Cases of Elasticity and Constant Elasticity
Chapter 5.3 - Elasticity and Pricing
Chapter 5.4 - Elasticity in Areas Other Than Price

Lesson 6: Utility Maximization
Chapter 6: Introduction
Chapter 6.1 - Consumption Choices
Chapter 6.2 - How Changes in Income and Prices Affect Consumption Choices
Chapter 6.3 - Indifference Curves
Chapter 6.4 - Behavioral Economics: An Alternative Framework for Consumer Choice

Lesson 7: Production, Costs, and Industry Structure
Chapter 7 : Introduction
Chapter 7.1 - Explicit and Implicit Costs, and Accounting and Economic Profit
Chapter 7.2 - Production in the Short Run
Chapter 7.3 - Costs in the Short Run
Chapter 7.4 - Production in the Long Run
Chapter 7.5 - Costs in the Long Run

Lesson 8 : Pure Competition in the Short Run
Chapter 8 : Introduction
Chapter 8.1 - Perfect Competition and Why It Matters
Chapter 8.2 - How Perfectly Competitive Firms Make Output Decisions

Lesson 9 - Pure Competition in the Long Run
Chapter 9 - Introduction
Chapter 9.1 - Entry and Exit Decisions in the Long Run
Chapter 9.2 - Efficiency in Perfectly Competitive Markets

Lesson 10 - Pure Monopoly
Chapter 10 - Introduction
Chapter 10.1 - How Monopolies Form: Barriers to Entry
Chapter 10.2 - How a Profit-Maximizing Monopoly Chooses Output and Price

Lesson 11: The Demand for Resources
Chapter 11 - Introduction
Chapter 11.1 - Demand for Labor

Lesson 12 - Rent, Interest and Profit
Chapter 12 - Introduction
Chapter 12.1 - Time Value of Money

Lesson 13: Agriculture: Economics and Policy
Chapter 13 - Introduction
Chapter 13.1 - Introduction to the Agriculture Economics

Lesson 14 - International Trade
Chapter 14 - Introduction
Chapter 14.1 - Absolute and Comparative Advantage
Chapter 14.2 - What Happens When a Country Has an Absolute Advantage in All Goods
Chapter 14.3 - Intra-industry Trade between Similar Economies
Chapter 14.4 - The Benefits of Reducing Barriers to International Trade
Chapter 14.5 - Protectionism: An Indirect Subsidy from Consumers to Producers
Chapter 14.6 - International Trade and Its Effects on Jobs, Wages, and Working Conditions
Chapter 14.7 - Arguments in Support of Restricting Imports
Chapter 14.8 - How Governments Enact Trade Policy: Globally, Regionally, and Nationally
Chapter 14.9 - The Tradeoffs of Trade Policy

This class examines how and why twentieth-century Americans came to define the ‰ŰĎgood life‰Ű through consumption, leisure, and material abundance. We will explore how such things as department stores, nationally advertised brand-name goods, mass-produced cars, and suburbs transformed the American economy, society, and politics. The course is organized both thematically and chronologically. Each period deals with a new development in the history of consumer culture. Throughout we explore both celebrations and critiques of mass consumption and abundance.

" This course focuses on alternative ways in which the issues of growth, restructuring, innovation, knowledge, learning, and accounting and measurements can be examined, covering both industrialized and emerging countries. We give special emphasis to recent transformations in regional economies throughout the world and to the implications these changes have for the theories and research methods used in spatial economic analyses. Readings will relate mainly to the United States, but we cover pertinent material on foreign countries in lectures."

Develops facility with concepts, language, and analytical tools of economics. Covers microeconomics, macroeconomics, and international trade and payments. Emphasizes integration of theory, data, and judgment in the analysis of corporate decisions and public policy, and in the assessment of changing US and international business environments. Restricted to Sloan Fellows. The fact of scarcity forces individuals, firms, and societies to choose among alternative uses -- or allocations -- of its limited resources. Accordingly, the first part of this summer course seeks to understand how economists model the choice process of individual consumers and firms, and how markets work to coordinate these choices. It also examines how well markets perform this function using the economist's criterion of market efficiency. Overall, this course focuses on microeconomics, with some topics from macroeconomics and international trade. It emphasizes the integration of theory, data, and judgment in the analysis of corporate decisions and public policy, and in the assessment of changing U.S. and international business environments.

Applied Macro- and International Economics uses case studies to investigate the macroeconomic environment in which firms operate. The first half of the course develops the basic tools of macroeconomic management: monetary, fiscal, and exchange rate policy. The class discusses recent emerging market and financial crises by examining their causes and considering how best to address them and prevent them from recurring in the future. The second half evaluates different strategies of economic development. Topics covered in the second half of this course include growth, the role of debt and foreign aid, and the reliance on natural resources.

This lesson explains leverage and insolvency and why it is good or bad. [Banking, Money, Finance playlist: Lesson 10 of 24]

This lesson tells how banks can give out loans without ever giving out gold. [Banking, Money, Finance playlist: Lesson 7 of 24]

This lesson talks about how money is created in a fractional reserve banking system. [Banking, Money, Finance playlist: Lesson 4 of 24]

This lesson talks about how money is created in a fractional reserve banking system. [Banking, Money, Finance playlist: Lesson 4 of 24]

This lesson explains reserve requirements and how they limit how much lending a bank can do. [Banking, Money, Finance playlist: Lesson 8 of 24]

This lesson introduces bank notes and how you are more familiar with them than you realize. [Banking, Money, Finance playlist: Lesson 5 of 24]

This lesson discusses government debt and treasuries. It explains what it means that Federal Reserve Notes are issued by the Reserve Bank but are not an obligation on the government. [Banking, Money, Finance playlist: Lesson 12 of 24]

This lesson introduces the ways that banks make money. [Banking, Money, Finance playlist: Lesson 1 of 24]

This lesson is an introduction to the income statement of a bank, and to income statements, in general. [Banking, Money, Finance playlist: Lesson 2 of 24]

Overview: This lesson talks about the pros and cons of various banking systems and talks more about using gold as a standard. [Banking, Money, Finance playlist: Lesson 18 of 24]

This lesson explains the weak points of fractional reserve banking. [Banking, Money, Finance playlist: Lesson 22 of 24]

This lesson continues the discussion of fractional reserve banking. It further discusses the FDIC, deposit insurance and its side effects. [Banking, Money, Finance playlist: Lesson 23 of 24]