Economics
Economics
Part of the Business & Entrepreneurship cluster.
Economics helps you understand how markets operate, since money makes the world go round. Consider how people and governments make choices, study how economies grow (or crash), and learn how data can be used to back up bold ideas. From behavioral quirks to environmental policy, you can explore the forces shaping society and gain the tools to analyze them.
Opening up Economics courses
You always have access to the 100-level courses in the field of Economics. Moving upward requires gateway courses. For the 200-level courses, you will have to take the Entrepreneurship & New Venture Creation gateways. If you want to progress to the 300-levels, you will need to take the Research Methods & Statistics gateway.
Courses in Business
Courses in Business
Gateway
Entrepreneurship & New Venture Creation
Entrepreneurship & New Venture Creation
Through experiential learning, students turn their own bold ideas into new ventures. No prior business expertise is required as teams work on a startup project from ideation to final pitch while gaining business and entrepreneurial skills in areas such as design thinking, business model and customer validation. The class fosters creativity and collaboration to drive business and social innovation.
Gateway
Research Methods & Statistics
Research Methods & Statistics
Research Methods & Statistics gives you a strong foundation in how business management—and social and behavioral sciences—move from mere practices to true fields of scientific study. You’ll learn how to plan research logically, from designing studies to working with real data using experimental and survey techniques. You’ll also study descriptive and inferential statistics, with a brief intro to multivariate tools.
100-level
Introduction to Economics
Introduction to Economics
Explore how individuals, firms, and societies make economic decisions. This course introduces key concepts from both microeconomics and macroeconomics, including markets, incentives, and the principles of supply and demand, and provides a foundation for analyzing real-world economic issues.
200-level
International Macroeconomics
International Macroeconomics
Study the economy as a whole through topics such as national income, economic growth, inflation, and unemployment. Understand how governments and central banks use fiscal and monetary policies to influence economic performance over time. The course also explores business cycles, international trade, and economic crises, preparing students to evaluate policy debates and global economic trends.
200-level
Microeconomics & Behavior
Microeconomics & Behavior
Study how consumers and producers make decisions under scarcity. Explore key concepts such as rational choice, decision-making under uncertainty, and non-egoistic preferences. Analyze market structures, strategic interactions, and factor markets. Learn how markets function and examine the impact of regulation. Develop analytical tools to better understand behavior and engage with empirical research.
300-level
Public Economics
Public Economics
Investigate the role of government in the economy, focusing on how public policy influences efficiency and equity. The course covers taxation, public goods, externalities, and government spending. Combining theoretical models with empirical evidence, it evaluates how different policies affect societal welfare.
300-level
Behavioral Economics
Behavioral Economics
This course integrates insights from psychology into economic theory to better understand how people make decisions. Learn how actual behavior deviates from the predictions of traditional economic models due to biases, heuristics, and framing. Through experiments, students will deepen their understanding of decision-making and its implications for economic theory and practice.
300-level
Econometrics
Econometrics
Econometrics supplies tools to analyze data to answer questions of causality and prediction. In this course you learn three estimators—Ordinary Least Squares, Generalized Least Squares, and Instrumental Variables—and three tests—t-test, F-test, and LM-test. Understanding the basic rules of econometrics, particularly the sampling distribution concept, is key, and the course uses Monte Carlo simulations in Stata to visualize it. Tools are applied to estimate economic relationships and make predictions, and students write an empirical paper.
300-level
Environmental Economics
Environmental Economics
This course examines the economic causes of environmental degradation and evaluates policy responses using microeconomic theory and empirical evidence. Topics include externalities, public goods, regulatory approaches, and incentive-based solutions. Students explore global environmental challenges, cost-benefit analysis, and the design of effective, equitable, and sustainable policies.
Also consider these options:
Also consider these options:
Cluster
Business & Entrepreneurship
Business & Entrepreneurship
The other fields within the Business & Entrepreneurship cluster.
Business & Entrepreneurship
Field of Study
Explore Mathematics!
Explore Mathematics!
To unlock powerful tools for understanding complex systems.
Mathematics
Field of Study
Explore Politics!
Explore Politics!
To understand the policies and power structures that shape economic systems.
Political Science
The UCR Program Builder is designed to help you easily plan your academic program. Step by step, the tool guides you through selecting courses, building a balanced curriculum, and meeting UCR’s academic requirements.
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The UCR Program Builder is designed to help you easily plan your academic program. Step by step, the tool guides you through selecting courses, building a balanced curriculum, and meeting UCR’s academic requirements.