Economics for finance

How prices, inflation, growth, interest rates and exchange rates work, and why they matter to companies and investors. These lessons start with a single market and move to the whole economy: how a price is set, how inflation is measured, how output and jobs are counted, what central banks do, what the yield curve shows, how exchange rates and a country's payments work, and how a government's debt changes over time.

Real figures from the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Treasury and the IMF carry each idea. Companies such as Tesla and Cal-Maine, Unilever and Procter & Gamble, Caterpillar, Lennar, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, Coca-Cola and McDonald's, and Alphabet and Walmart show how each force reaches a business.

7 lessons, about 3 hours 10 minutes of reading in all. Start at the top and go in order.

After this module you will be able to

• explain how demand, supply and elasticity set a price and change a seller's revenue
• measure inflation and say why a household's rate can differ from the headline
• read GDP, unemployment and leading indicators without being misled by them
• describe what a central bank does and apply the Taylor rule with its limits
• read a yield curve and say what an inversion does and does not show
• separate a company's growth from the effect of exchange rates
• use the debt-ratio rule to see how interest, growth and the budget interact

The lessons

1. Supply, demand and prices24 minHow demand, supply and elasticity set prices, with a live calculator and two real cases: the egg price spike at Cal-Maine and Tesla's 2023 price cuts.
2. Inflation26 minWhat inflation is, how a price index is built, what causes it, and how one shock reaches the headline rate, with a calculator using real US CPI weights.
3. GDP, cycles and jobs27 minHow GDP is measured, how recessions are dated, what the unemployment rate misses and which indicators lead, with a live jobs calculator.
4. Central banks and interest rates28 minWhat the Fed and the ECB are asked to do, how rate changes spread, and a live Taylor rule calculator, with Lennar as a real-company example.
5. Yield curves28 minHow to read the Treasury yield curve, why it inverts and what that signals, with a live calculator and two real banks as examples.
6. Exchange rates and payments28 minHow exchange rates work, what the balance of payments records and how currency moves company results, with a live calculator.
7. Fiscal policy and public debt29 minDeficits, debt and why a debt ratio rises or falls, with a live calculator, US and Japan data and two companies' tax rates.

Start with the first lesson