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Paths / Path 26

Economics

How people, firms and countries choose when they can't have everything, and how to tell what actually caused what.

For: anyone starting the degree, anyone who reads the economic news and wants to see under it, anyone who has wondered why prices rise.

Shaped by the cores of MIT's Course 14-1 (principles, intermediate theory, statistics and econometrics) and the LSE and Chicago programmes.

15readings
3 hoursof reading
4stages
15 reads
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Stage 1

Year 1 · The language

5 readings · 1 hours
  1. 01ReadInteractiveQuiz10 min

    Calculus I: Slopes, Totals and the Bridge Between Them

    Margins are derivatives: economics is the study of "one more".
  2. 02ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Microeconomics: Why Nothing Is Free and Every Price Is a Message

    Supply, demand, incentives and when markets fail: the toolkit everything else uses.
  3. 03ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min

    Macroeconomics: The Economy as One Machine, and Why It Stalls

    Growth, inflation, unemployment and central banks: the economy as a whole.
  4. 04ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Probability & Statistics: Reasoning with Uncertainty

    Economic data is noisy; statistics is how economists avoid fooling themselves.
  5. 05ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Linear Algebra: Machines That Move Space

    Many markets at once, and every regression, are linear algebra.
Stage 2

Year 2 · The core

4 readings · 47 min
  1. 06ReadInteractiveQuiz10 min

    Multivariable Calculus: Calculus on a Landscape

    Choosing the best bundle under a budget is optimisation in many variables.
  2. 07ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Econometrics: How to Find What Caused What

    Correlation is cheap; the credibility revolution is how economists find causes.
  3. 08ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Game Theory: When Your Best Move Depends on Mine

    When your best move depends on mine: prices, auctions, arms races.
  4. 09ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Public Economics: What Governments Can and Can't Fix

    Taxes, public goods and inequality: what governments can and can't fix.
Stage 3

Year 3 · Fields

4 readings · 51 min
  1. 10ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Behavioral Economics: How People Actually Choose

    Real people aren't perfectly rational, and the ways they deviate are predictable.
  2. 11ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min

    International Trade & Finance: Why Countries Swap, and Why Currencies Swing

    Why countries trade, why currencies move, and who wins and loses from both.
  3. 12ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Strategy & Competition: Why Some Firms Keep Their Profits

    How firms compete, when they get too big, and what antitrust does about it.
  4. 13ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Corporate Finance: The Price of Time and Risk

    How markets price time and risk.
Stage 4

Year 4 · The frontier

2 readings · 23 min
  1. 14ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Development Economics: Why Some Countries Are Rich, and What Has Actually Helped

    Why some countries are rich and others poor, and what has actually helped.
  2. 15ReadInteractiveQuiz11 min

    Machine Learning: Programs That Write Their Own Rules

    Economists now predict and measure with machine learning; knowing its limits matters.
When you finish

MIT OpenCourseWare 14.01 (Principles of Microeconomics) and 14.02 (Macroeconomics), free; CORE Econ's free textbook The Economy; then the textbooks named at the end of each subject. See also the library's 31 Political Economy for the big systems.

Next path →

Business Administration

How an organisation turns people, money and ideas into something customers will pay for, and keeps doing it.