Courses tagged with "Structural+engineering" (87)

Public Finance rests at the intersection of two disciplines: Public Economics and Public Choice.  Public Economics deals with issues of social optimality: how much of a good (or ill) does a society desire (or tolerate), and how do we incentivize producers and consumers to attain that amount?  Public economics concerns itself with externalities, which are costs that are borne by persons not involved in a market transaction.  There are both positive and negative externalities; public economists want to know how we get more of the good and less of the bad.  Public choice is the field of economics that looks into the behavior of voters, politicians, and bureaucrats and studies how they choose given different policy institutions. The field of Public Finance studies the interaction between these two disciplines, asking questions like: How do the incentives of the political actors shape the policies they craft?  How does that in turn affect the outcomes in the marketplace?  Alternately, students of Public Fi…

This course surveys major topics and theories in the field of Industrial Organization.  As part of the applied microeconomics structure, Industrial Organization uses the basic tools of microeconomic theory and game theory to study the structure and behavior of firms and their strategic interactions with one another in the marketplace.  Industrial Organization also studies the impact that those interactions have on market structure and welfare. Different kinds of market structures (perfect competition, imperfect competition, monopoly, oligopoly, and so forth) present different scenarios in which firms strive to acquire and use market power for their strategic advantage.  While perfect competition and monopoly are two market structures on opposite ends of the spectrum, imperfect competitionwhere a limited number of firms attempt to manipulate their rivals or consumersis a more realistic set-up.  This course will emphasize market structure analysis and the strategic behaviors of competing firms, including…

This course will provide you with an analytical framework for the study of international trade.  Historically, international trade has played a critical role in enabling countries to grow, develop, and become economically powerful.  Through international trade in goods and services, the economies of different countries are more closely linked to one another now than ever before.  At the same time, the world economy is more turbulent now than it has been in decades.  Keeping up with the shifting international environment has become a central concern in business strategy and national economic policy.  This course uses the same fundamental methods of analysis deployed in other branches of economics, as the motives and behavior of individuals and firms remain the same whether they are in the context of international trade or domestic transactions.  You will learn, however, that international trade introduces an entirely new and different set of concerns as well. This course will cover a broad array of rel…

Build your earth science vocabulary and learn about cycles of matter and types of sedimentary rocks through the Education Portal course Earth Science 101: Earth Science. Our series of video lessons and accompanying self-assessment quizzes can help you boost your scientific knowledge ahead of the Excelsior Earth Science exam . This course was designed by experienced educators and examines both science basics, like experimental design and systems of measurement, and more advanced topics, such as analysis of rock deformation and theories of continental drift.

Principles of Microeconomics belongs to the CLEP® PREP suite of Saylor courses. This version of ECON101 will help you master the subject of microeconomics and will help prepare you to take the CLEP® exam in microeconomics [1]. The purpose of this course is to provide you with a basic understanding of the principles of microeconomics. At its core, the study of economics deals with the choices and decisions that have to be made in order to manage scarce resources available to us. Microeconomics is the branch of economics that pertains to decisions made at the individual level, i.e., by individual consumers or individual firms after evaluating resources, costs, and tradeoffs. When we talk about the economy, we are referring to the marketplace or system in which these choices interact with one another. In this course, you will learn how and why these decisions are made and how they affect one another in the economy. Each of the following units has been designed as a building block, where the concepts you le…

Economics is traditionally divided into two parts: microeconomics and macroeconomics. The main purpose of this course is to introduce you to the principles of macroeconomics. Macroeconomics is the study of how a country’s economy works while trying to discern among good, better, and best choices for improving and/or maintaining a nation’s standard of living and level of economic and societal well-being. Historical and contemporary perspectives on the roles and policies of government are part of the mix of interpretations and alternatives that surround questions of who or what gains and loses the most or least within a relatively small set of key interdependent players. In the broadest view, that set consists of households, consumers, savers, firm owners, investors, agency and elected officials, and global trading partners in which some wear many hats and face price considerations at two levels. Consider one distinction between macroeconomics and microeconomics though prices are taken into account in bot…