An important goal of this course is to familiarise students with important macroeconomic concepts, indicators, and relations, and to give students insights into macroeconomic theories (with corresponding empirical knowledge) of long-run economic growth processes, structural unemployment, inflation and other nominal variables, and business cycles. This will help you to understand how small, open economies are affected by the international economy, and important economic policy issues confronting governments and central banks. Another goal is to equip students with sufficient knowledge to understand theories and macroeconomic models that explain how fiscal and monetary policy, such as inflation targeting, can be used to influence the macroeconomy.

After taking this course you should understand and be able to explain important macroeconomic concepts, indicators and the most common policy targets and instruments of fiscal and monetary policy in advanced economies. You are expected to understand the crucial distinction between real and nominal variables and concepts. You should also be able to distinguish wrong statements in macroeconomics from correct ones, as well as descriptive statements from normative ones. You should also have acquired a good overview of macroeconomic relations and empirical knowledge. Finally, you should understand the logical structure of basic macroeconomic growth models and elementary models of business cycles and inflation.