Přístupnostní navigace
E-application
Search Search Close
Course detail
FP-ZEAcad. year: 2025/2026
The course covers microeconomic relationships and contexts, concepts, and essential theoretical foundations necessary for the microeconomic analysis of problems, facilitating the formation of a comprehensive understanding that leads to the rational behavior of microeconomic entities in a market environment. The course content is particularly focused on the behavior of consumers and firms in both perfect and imperfect competition. Additionally, the course addresses the issues of production factors and production functions. The content also includes the area of government interventions from a microeconomic perspective.
In the second part, the course discusses the fundamental economic relationships and contexts, concepts, and essential theoretical foundations necessary for analyzing current issues in the contemporary economy. Students will acquire a comprehensive understanding about the rational behavior of entities in the market environment concerning issues related to consumption, investment, inflation, and unemployment, as well as the measurement of economic output and its long-term growth, the business cycle, and fiscal and monetary policy. The course aims to provide an understanding of the behavior of the economy as a whole.
Language of instruction
Number of ECTS credits
Mode of study
Guarantor
Department
Entry knowledge
General economic and mathematical knowledge from high school is assumed.
Rules for evaluation and completion of the course
A student will receive credit if they earn at least 20 out of a possible 40 points awarded in the exercises. Points can be obtained from two midterm written assignments: the microeconomics midterm in the 8th week of the semester and the macroeconomics midterm in the 13th week of the semester. The maximum number of points from these written assignments is 40, distributed in a 60:40 ratio. Therefore, the maximum score for the microeconomics assignment is 24 points, with a minimum of 12 points required for successful completion, and the maximum score for the macroeconomics assignment is 16 points, with a minimum of 8 points required for successful completion. Students are entitled to a retake for both the first and second midterm written assignments. The retake for both assignments will be at the beginning of the examination period. Detailed information about the time and place for the retakes will be provided in the e-learning system, in course updates, or communicated by the instructor. Attendance in the exercises is not monitored.
The examination consists solely of theoretical questions (except for some questions with numerical tasks, though not as complex as those covered in the exercises). All questions in the exams are either multiple-choice with only one correct answer or true/false questions. For multiple-choice questions, students can earn 2 points for a correct answer, while no answer or an incorrect answer will be scored 0 points. For true/false questions, students can earn 1 point for a correct answer, with no answer or an incorrect answer scored 0 points. The questions in the exam are distributed in a 60:40 ratio between microeconomics and macroeconomics. Students must score at least 30 points in the exam.
Grading scale (students can earn up to 40 points from exercises and up to 60 points from the exam, for a total of 100 points):
A: 90 – 100 points
B: 80 – 89 points
C: 70 – 79 points
D: 60 – 69 points
E: 50 – 59 points
F: less than 50 points
A student has the right to withdraw from the exam no later than 24 hours before its start. A student who withdraws from the exam is considered not to have registered for the exam. If a student withdraws after the exam has started, fails to appear for the exam without a valid excuse, or if the excuse is not accepted, they will be graded "F". If a student does not withdraw from the exam in time, they can still excuse themselves for serious reasons, particularly health-related, up to 5 working days after the scheduled exam date or after the obstacle preventing the excuse has been removed.
Completion of the Course for Students with Individual Study Plans
If a student has an approved individual study plan, they are required to submit written assignments specified by the instructor and take repeat midterm written assignments in both microeconomics and macroeconomics to receive credit. Ten examples will be selected from microeconomics and ten from macroeconomics for the student to work on. These assignments must be submitted at least 2 days before the scheduled date for the midterm written assignment. The exam is written and follows the same rules as the standard course completion requirements.
Aims
The purpose of the course is to acquire and organize foundational knowledge in economic theory. By familiarizing themselves with the basic concepts of microeconomics and macroeconomics, students will understand the logic of market processes and the functioning of market mechanisms in everyday life. The main objective is to analyze real-world phenomena in the market environment and apply acquired knowledge in proposing solutions.
The student will be able to explain the basic concepts of economic theory and the principles of human economic behavior, as well as understand the fundamental mechanism of the national economy and its equilibrium, including the connections between the national economy and the global economy and their impact on the local interests of firms and institutions.
Study aids
Prerequisites and corequisites
Basic literature
Recommended reading
Elearning
Classification of course in study plans
Lecture
Teacher / Lecturer
Syllabus
Basic Thematic Content of the Course Lectures:
1. Introduction to the subject and basic principles - The emergence of economics and its subject matter. Basic economic principles and their measurement. Errors in economic thinking and reasoning. Prices as a mechanism for coordinating human activities.2. Rational human behavior. Goods and factors of production. Households and firms. Alternative economic systems. The economic cycle of factors of production and goods, household income, and firm revenue.3. Consumer behavior and demand formation – Utility theory. Consumer optimum (equilibrium). Market demand. The law of diminishing demand. Demand elasticity.4. Company behavior in a perfectly competitive market – accounting costs and economic costs. Accounting profit and economic profit. Cost allocation. Profit as the difference between revenue and costs. Company equilibrium. Supply curve and company shutdown point. Supply elasticity.5. Market equilibrium and efficiency – market equilibrium and equilibrium price. Achieving market equilibrium. Stability of market equilibrium. Equilibrium of marginal utility and marginal costs. Externalities.6. Company behavior in conditions of imperfect competition - the emergence of imperfect competition, basic characteristics of market structures: monopoly, oligopoly. Monopolistic competition. Monopsony.
7. The market for production factors – the capital market, the labor market, and the land market (demand in the credit capital market, supply of monetary capital, equilibrium in the monetary capital market, supply of labor, demand for labor, equilibrium in the labor market). Unemployment, its forms, and causes. Measuring unemployment. State employment policy.8. Microeconomic policy of the state and state intervention in prices – Forms of state intervention to protect the market. Price ceiling. Effect of excise duty on changes in price and quantity of goods. Price subsidies (price floor).9. Aggregate variables - aggregate supply and aggregate demand. Growth and decline of AD and AS, aggregate expenditure, slope of the AS curve, slope of the AD curve. AS-AD model.10. Measuring economic performance. Product and income indicators. Nominal, real, and potential GDP. Alternative indicators of living standards.11. The theory of money, equilibrium in the money market, the money multiplier. Inflation and its causes, types of inflation. The Phillips curve theory.12. Macroeconomic goals and state economic policy. Fiscal policy – public finances, state budget, built-in stabilizers, discretionary measures, expansionary and restrictive fiscal policy.13. Monetary policy. Monetary policy instruments and goals, expansionary and restrictive monetary policy.
Exercise
Basic Thematic Content of Course Exercises:
Information about the course, requirements for credit. Introduction to economics. Rational human behavior. Goods and factors of production. Households and firms. The economic cycle of factors of production and goods, household income, and firm revenue. The market, types of markets, market participants, and market mechanisms.2. Consumer behavior and demand formation. The law of diminishing marginal utility. Demand elasticity.3. Firm behavior in DK; Firm equilibrium; Supply curve, break-even point, and shutdown point. Derivation of supply. Supply elasticity.4. Market equilibrium; balancing MU and MC; consumer and producer surplus from exchange. 5. Externalities. State intervention in prices. Price ceiling. Price floor. Excise tax.6. Imperfectly competitive markets: Monopoly, Oligopoly, Monopolistic competition.7. Factors of production markets.8. Midterm exam in microeconomics.9. AS-AD model. Curve formation, the effect of price and non-price factors.10. Measuring economic performance – GDP, methods of calculating GDP, the economic cycle. Unemployment.11. Money market. Inflation.