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Fundamentals to Economics (E)

Niveau

First cycle, Bachelor

Learning outcomes of the courses/module

The students are able to:
Introduction to Business Administration component:
• Identify the different business subareas
• Understand the fundamentals of marketing
• Understand the fundamentals of personnel management
• Understand the structure of an enterprise and typical operational processes and they are familiar with the basic constitutive factors of an enterprise
• Recognize relationships in the sense of the various relationships between the business functions
• Clearly differentiate between central business terms
• Identify the most important constitutional and functional corporate decisions

Applied Economics component:
• name the essential components of a market model and discuss the market equilibrium as an interaction of supply and demand.
• identify the determinants of consumer demand and explain how they respond to external factors such as changes in income.
• explain both the potentials and the limitations of market models based on real-world markets, for example the housing or labor market, and to buttress abstract models with real-life examples.
• understand production decisions in companies and interpret the influences of market structures on price setting.
• examine and critically evaluate current developments on the basis of models.
• name the essential components and institutions of a national economy and explain how they function.
• identify macroeconomic indicators such as gross domestic product or consumer price index and explain their meaning.
• conduct independent research on indicators important for economic growth and inflation and to present current developments in this regard.

Prerequisites for the course

not applicable

Course content

Introduction to Business Administration component:
• Overview and context analysis of the most important subareas in business administration
• Subject and fundamentals of business administration:
• Operational functional areas
• Business decision theory
• Fundamentals of management and ethics
• Fundamentals of personnel and organization
• Marketing Fundamentals
• Fundamentals of:
• Constitutive company decisions such as legal forms, location decisions, types of mergers and acquisitions and choice of business segment.
• Functional business decisions: Materials management, production management, marketing.
• Fundamentals of business value creation processes and functions (value creation architecture and structure).
• Fundamentals of market, process and strategy oriented management.

Applied Economics component:
• Economic thinking and marginal analysis
• Efficient allocation of scarce resources
• The market model and market equilibrium
• Macroeconomic variables (GDP, inflation, and unemployment) and their interrelationships

Selected macroeconomics issues:
• Elasticity and welfare
• Cost functions and optimal corporate production
• Price setting and market structures
• Short-term macroeconomic fluctuations: The business cycle
• Money, the ECB, and inflation
• Long-term economic growth
• International relations and trade

Recommended specialist literature

• Vahs, Schäfer-Kunz (2012): Einführung in die Betriebswirtschaftslehre, 6.Auflage, Schäffer-Poeschel Verlag Stuttgart
• Mankiw (2012): Grundzüge der Volkswirtschaftslehre, 5. Aufl., Schäffer-Poeschel Verlag Stuttgart
• Mankiw (2003): Makroökonomik, 5. Aufl., Schäffer-Poeschel Verlag Stuttgart
• Blanchard (2008): Macroeconomics, 5. Aufl., Pearson Education
• Pindyck, Rubinfeld (2012): Microeconomics, 8. Aufl., Pearson Education
• Varian (2010): Intermediate Microeconomics, 8. Aufl., Norton & Company

Assessment methods and criteria

Final written Exam

Language

English

Number of ECTS credits awarded

5

Share of e-learning in %

30

Semester hours per week

4.0

Planned teaching and learning method

integrated Lecture

Semester/trimester in which the course/module is offered

2

Name of lecturer

Dipl.-Kfm. Marco Stephan

Academic year

Key figure of the course/module

vzWIR1

Type of course/module

integrated lecture

Type of course

Compulsory

Internship(s)

not applicable