(uplifting violin music)
- My name is Raji Jayaraman.
I teach a first year course
called microeconomics for global affairs,
that all our MGA students
are required to take.
Some students come into my class
having done some economics
before and you know,
they love it.
Others come into my class,
having no idea about economics
and they're either terrified of it
or have decided already that they hate it.
Regardless of whether you
love economics or hate it,
I think we can all agree
that economics is
really, really important.
My goal in this course is not
to turn you into economists,
you're global affairs students.
Rather what I want
is to equip you with a set of
economic tools and concepts
that allow you to make sense
of the types of economic incentives
that drive people to do
the things that they do.
I want you to understand
concepts like opportunity costs,
utility maximization,
demand and supply, prices,
markets, externalities,
so that you can make sense
of economic outcomes.
I think this course is
important for two reasons.
First, it allows you to
be informed citizens,
to read the news and to make
sense of the world around you.
The second reason
is that it allows you
to think conceptually,
and to be informed by data
so that you're able to make
evidence-based policy decisions.
And that's really important
because at the end of this program,
you're going to go out into the world
and you really want to
make policy decisions
in global affairs based on the evidence.
(uplifting violin music)
