Economics
This course is also suitable for students interested in management.
Microeconomics Applications
Our two economics courses are developed to strike a unique balance between the theoretical and the practical – giving students access to the latest academic research and the tools to let them apply that understanding to the key issues in twenty-first century economics and business.
Our microeconomics course begins with foundational coverage of microeconomic theory, before covering topics including public goods, externalities, game theory and informational economics. The course will then spend time applying these theories to questions ranging from the internet and social networks to healthcare and education.
Course 2
Macroeconomics and Policymaking
In our macroeconomics course you will be introduced to the ways in which digital forces are reshaping modern consumer markets, which behave very differently to the traditional markets studied in economics curricula. Some goods or services are offered at deep discounts or even for free, e.g. news websites do not charge readers or Facebook does not charge users of the platform. Supply for some goods is restricted even though they have zero costs, e.g. digital copies of movies, music, etc. Online retail is often dominated by few huge marketplaces, or platforms, like Amazon, eBay or Taobao. Consumer attention and consumer private information are the core elements of digital markets.
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the key economic research of internet markets developed in recent years, concerned with pricing on internet, two-sided platforms, search engines, targeted advertising and customer data.
The second week focuses on application of these concepts to digital and internet markets: building up and exploiting network effects, online price dispersion, price comparison websites, search engines and position auctions and product versioning.
We recommend good mathematical skills as a background for applicants to both courses.
Subject Tutors
Dr Rhys Llewellyn Thomas, St Edmund Hall, Oxford
Rhys Llewellyn Thomas is a Teaching and Research Fellow in Economics at St Edmund Hall, and his research focuses on topics in Health Economics. He teaches Microeconomics related subjects to undergraduate students at the Hall. Rhys graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Southampton in 2016. Subsequently, he studied for an MSc. and a Ph.D. in Economics, also at the University of Southampton, which were both funded through an ESRC DTC 1+3 Research Studentship. During his Ph.D. studies Rhys spent several months on a secondment at the Department for Education (UK), where he spent some time researching school exclusions and factors associated with disadvantaged pupil performance.
Dr George Bitsakakis
University of Oxford Economics Department
George has taught a wide range of papers for colleges across the University, and has developed a particular interest in working with international students. He is a former fellow of St Benet’s Hall and is now based in the Department of Economics.
