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From the Michigan Content Expectations:

Understanding economics – what some people call “economic literacy” – is becoming essential for citizens in our national and increasingly interconnected world economy. Increasingly, productive members of society must be able to identify, analyze, and evaluate the causes and consequences of individual economic decisions and public policy including issues raised by constraints imposed by scarcity, how economies and markets work, and the benefits and costs of economic interaction and interdependence. Such literacy includes analysis, reasoning, problem solving, and decision making that helps people function as consumers, producers, savers, investors, and responsible citizens.

 

Students who meet the expectations will understand how economies function and how to apply the concepts and principles of economics to their lives as individuals and as citizens. Understanding and applying these concepts and principles should help students make sense of daily events and enable them to analyze, investigate and develop reasoned thinking about economic challenges and public policies. To cite the “Goals 2000: Educate America Act” of 1994, the study of economics (among other subjects) should ensure that students learn to “use their minds well, so they may be prepared for responsible citizenship, further learning, and productive employment in our Nation’s modern economy.”

 

Overview of the MI Open Book Project Economics Text:

 

Unit 1: Choice- Fundamentals of Economics

Compelling questions:

• Are you an Economist?
• Is there a wrong way to make a choice?
• When should the government intervene in the economy?

Supporting questions:

• Why do we make choices?
• How do economists and other rational individuals evaluate costs and benefit?
• How do economics systems answer the three basic economic questions?
• Why does everyone experience scarcity?
• In what situations should a cost-benefit analysis be used?
• What are the three fundamental economic questions that everyone faces?
• What are the six economic goals of an economic system?

 

Unit 2: Personal Financial Decisions

Compelling questions:

• How is Economics life?

 

Supporting Questions:

• Why is it important to create a budget and set goals?
• Does budgeting and career choice affect your economic success?
• How does Short term/long term goals affect your Education? Career?
• In which ways does obtaining credit influence your economic success?
• Does a diversified saving and investing portfolio ensure economic success?
• Why is it important to have a diversified portfolio?

 

Unit 3: Microeconomics: Consumer/ Producers Decision making

Compelling Question:

• In a market economy who sets prices, and is the process fair and effective?

 

Supporting Questions:

• What factors influence consumers purchasing decisions?
• What factors influence the production decisions of producers?
• Collectively how do consumers and business work to determine price?
• Does the form of business organization impact how that business sets prices?

 

 

Unit 4: Macroeconomics: How does government make decisions?

Compelling question:

• At what point is government intervention in the economy necessary and appropriate?

 

Supporting questions:

• What makes macroeconomics different from microeconomics?
• What does GDP measure?
• What is the difference between Real and Nominal GDP?
• What is the Business Cycle and what happens in each part?
• What are the different types of unemployment?

 

Unit 5: Global Interactions and Decision Making

Compelling question:

• Is trade and global interaction beneficial?

 

Supporting questions:

• Why do nations trade with each other?
• What makes a country rich or poor
• How is economic growth measured?

 

 

 

 

 

 

These materials were developed under a grant awarded by the Michigan Department of Education.