This First-Year Seminar course provides a practical application of economic analysis to a number of current economic debates within North Carolina.  The course will be organized around case studies drawn from economic activities.  The case studies will be chosen to highlight and extend fundamental economic concepts while also providing skills in organizing and examining data. 

My goal in this course is to provide students with opportunities to apply an economic perspective for thinking about problems.  We will do this through applications to specific examples important to North Carolinians.  These will be useful both to those interested in majoring in Economics and to those with an interest in the workings of the North Carolina economy.

The current recession in the state has led to unemployment rates not observed since the Great Depression. Our unifying themes in this course will be identification of the causes of this unemployment and analysis of opportunities for the creation of new jobs to replace those lost. Our examples will be drawn from throughout North Carolina, but we will give special attention to three counties within the state: Lenoir County (an agricultural area), Surry County (traditionally a manufacturing area), and Mecklenburg County (manufacturing, entertainment, and services). "Road trips" to those counties will be scheduled during the semester.