ESSENTIAL ECONOMICS

This is a very comprehensive training workshop and is tailored to be useful to participants with varying degrees of previous background in economics. Both experienced economists and non-economists will find it useful and enjoyable. The choice of topics for this workshop is guided by one overriding criterion: whether the concept included in the workshop is directly useful for understanding or analyzing economic policies in general, and public policies in particular. This workshop differs from other standard economic courses in another more fundamental way. Each policy is analyzed primarily from the public perspective rather than private perspective. That is, it focuses on costs and benefits from the society's point of view rather than an individual's point of view. It does not, however, supplant the private perspective, rather, it supplements it.

While the final choice of topics will be partially influenced by participant interest and workshop composition, the following is an illustrative list of topics that will be covered during the training workshop:

• Review of basic economic concepts with applications and cases dealing with: Concept of Demand and Supply; Elasticity of demand and supply; Tools for welfare analysis: Consumer Surplus and Producer Surplus; Cost of production; Different forms of markets: perfect competition, versus imperfect competition
• Applied cases from economics of international trade and foreign exchange markets
• Applied cases from economics of regulation
• Applied cases from economics of health
• Applied cases from economics of education
• Economics of public enterprise pricing policies
• Fundamentals of social cost-benefit analysis
• Economic analysis of privatization impact
• Macroeconomic policies for managing the economy.
• Economics of housing markets
• Economics of agriculture policies
• Economic analysis of tax policies
• Economics of transportation
• Economic impact of internet and impact of internet on economics
• Application of economic analysis to various other sectors such as water, minerals, and hydrocarbons.

Workshop participants will be sent some background reading material in advance to prepare themselves for the workshop.