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Individual Course

Principles of Economics: Supply, Demand, and Market Fundamentals

Course Length

4 weeks

1–2 hours per week

Featuring faculty from:

Harvard Faculty of Arts & Sciences LogoHarvard Faculty of Arts & Sciences

Enroll as Individual

Price:

$ 149

On demand

Enroll on edX

Enroll as Individual

Price:

$ 149

On demand

Enroll on edX

Explore how people, businesses, and governments make decisions using core economic concepts and tools.

Economics is about more than markets and money. It is a way of understanding how people, businesses, and governments make choices when resources are limited. In Principles of Economics: Supply, Demand, and Optimization, you will develop an economic lens for examining decisions ranging from how you spend your time and money to how global events, public policies, and technological change shape markets and society.

Guided by Harvard Professors David Laibson and Jason Furman, you will explore foundational economic concepts including scarcity, trade-offs, supply and demand, market equilibrium, and optimization at the margin. You will learn to distinguish objective economic claims from value-based judgments, examine how individuals and institutions make decisions, and analyze how changes in economic conditions affect prices and behavior.

Throughout the course, you will also consider how economists evaluate evidence, distinguish correlation from causation, and use tools such as randomized controlled trials and natural experiments to test economic theories. Rather than memorizing ready-made answers, you will build a framework for asking better questions, evaluating evidence, and approaching personal and public decisions as a skeptical, informed citizen.

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A Verified Certificate costs $149 and provides unlimited access to full course materials, activities, tests, and forums. At the end of the course, learners who earn a passing grade can receive a certificate.

⁠Alternatively, learners can Audit the course for free and have access to select course material, activities, tests, and forums. Please note that this track does not offer a certificate for learners who earn a passing grade.

Faculty

Your Instructor

David Laibson

Robert I. Goldman Professor of Economics

David Laibson is the Robert I. Goldman Professor of Economics and a Faculty Dean of Lowell House. Laibson’s research focuses on the topic of behavioral economics, with emphasis on intertemporal choice, self-regulation, behavior change, household finance, public finance, macroeconomics, asset pricing, aging, and biosocial science. Laibson is a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is a Research Associate in the Aging, Asset Pricing, and Economic Fluctuations Working Groups. Laibson serves on Harvard’s Pension Investment Committee and on the Board of the Russell Sage Foundation, where he chairs the finance committee. Laibson serves on the advisory boards of the Social Science Genetics Association Consortium and the Consumer Finance Institute of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Laibson has served as the Chair of the Department of Economics at Harvard University and as a member of the Academic Research Council of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Laibson is a recipient of a Marshall Scholarship. He is an elected member of the Econometric Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and the National Academy of Sciences. He is a two-time recipient of the TIAA-CREF Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security. Laibson holds degrees from Harvard University (AB Economics, summa cum laude), the London School of Economic (MSc in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD in Economics). He received his PhD in 1994 and has taught at Harvard since then. In recognition of his teaching, he has been awarded Harvard’s ΦΒΚ Prize and a Harvard College Professorship.

Your Instructor

Jason Furman

Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy

Jason Furman is the Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy, jointly at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard's Department of Economics. He serves as the Weil Director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He co-teaches Ec10, "Principles of Economics," the largest course at Harvard. From 2013 to 2017, Furman served as the 28th Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, acting as President Obama's chief economist and a member of the cabinet, capping eight years as a top economic adviser in the Obama White House. His research and writing span U.S. and international macroeconomics, fiscal policy, labor markets, and competition policy. He is a contributing Opinion writer at the New York Times and the editor of two books on economic policy. Furman holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.