Welcome to this course on understanding economic policy making.
Our objective in this course is for
you to be able to understand the economic world that surrounds you.
The different data that we find,
the different announcements that appear all the time in the media.
And to be able to connect that information with what governments do in the economy.
I'm hoping that as you do this course,
you'll be able to understand better what quantitative easing is about.
Why are debt levels in the world so high and what kind of problem does that pose?
Where is Japan going?
What will happen as the US raises interest rates?
All of these are issues that are important for our world.
And hopefully through this course, you can first understand what's going on, and
second, make some projections into the future based on that understanding.
Ultimately what I would really like to achieve in this course is first of all
my students can read the media better,
be much better observers of economic realities.
But further than that, that they can become well-informed citizens that may be
pressure for good policy.
Because it's something that's really important in our world.
This course was first offered in 2014 through Coursera.
It was a six week long course.
And now it's going on demand.
This means a few changes for us.
I have gone through all of the videos and have found, fortunately,
since economics is such a fast moving, fast changing world,
that everything stands, because basically what I'm trying to give you are the tools.
When there is a change, I will have introduced some sort of a correction,
or in some cases a new video.
And of course we will continually update this with sessions,
office hours, as events make it necessary.
But the one thing you should be aware of,
as you listen to the videos, is that I refer to weeks.
Week one, week two, week three, there were six weeks in the initial course.
Now you should think whenever your week think of module.
Because the weeks have now become module one, module two, module three.
So that's the only translation change that you're gonna have to
make as you listen to the course.