Fundamentals to Economics (E)

level of course unit

First cycle, Bachelor

Learning outcomes of course unit

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 and co-requisites

not applicable

course contents

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