Economics

Faculty: Professor Kench, Chair; Dana Professor Fesmire; Professor Hoke; Associate Professors Beekman, Jayakumar, Skipton, Stinespring; Assistant Professors Agirdas, Hall, Morgan, Wood; Instructor DeNicco; Visiting Assistant Professor Farel.

A student may choose a major in business economics leading to a Bachelor of Science degree or a major in economics leading to a Bachelor of Arts degree, but not both. While both the B.A. and B.S. in economics share the same required economics coursework, the B.A. has one more required elective and the B.S. includes the entire business core curriculum. This set of coursework provides B.S. students with a modern integrated business curriculum that includes broad exposure to each of the functional areas in business (accounting, finance, information technology, management and marketing) to accompany a solid foundation in economics. The economics field consists of two main areas: microeconomics, which addresses issues relating to individual firm behavior, including profit maximization, resource usage and price strategies; and macroeconomics, which relates to the broad issues that are national and global in scope, including economic growth, inflation, unemployment, fiscal and monetary policy, and the balance of payments. Courses in the curriculum are divided into these two broad categories.

While the minor in economics may be completed without calculus preparation, Calculus I (or Calculus for Business) is a prerequisite for each of the 400-level courses in economics (including ECO 460 Econometrics and ECO 461 Seminar in Economics).