Workshop 1

Welcome to your first workshop! This will be an important time used to familiarise you with
the unit content, your assessment, and the essential techniques involved in researching,
writing and referencing your essay.

If you have any questions about the unit, please use this time to talk to your tutor.

Bring your text book to every workshop!

Unit Overview

The topics that you will cover in this workshop include the following:

1. How to prepare for each week’s workshops. What it means to participate in workshops.

2. What sort of economic news items to bring for the first few minutes of each workshop.

3. Familiarisation with expectations of the unit, including assessment.

4. Working through your Unit Information and Learning Guide and your text book.

5. Using the unit website, including podcasts, lecture recordings, etc..

6. You can do further questions on your own using the MyLab website that accompanies
your text books. You will be encouraged to register on the MyLab website and be
introduced to the learning material that is offers.

7. Essay writing techniques. Students have one research essay to complete in this unit.
This is a valuable piece of assessment as you will learn research techniques and it will
help you to evaluate what you read and develop problems-solving skills.

8. Correct referencing is essential, without which you will lose marks in the research
essay for this unit. Also note that different schools of study in the University have
different referencing requirements, so for other units, check with your unit coordinator
regarding the appropriate style of referencing for that school.

In-Class Workshop Questions/Activities

 Lecture Recording/Podcast review (5 - 10 minutes)

1. Briefly discuss some significant macroeconomic issues that have been in the news
recently, both in Australia and overseas.
2. Assess the current state of the Australian economy. Your discussion should include the
economic growth rate and other important economic indicators in the current year and in
recent years.

3. Mishkin (2015), Macroeconomics: Policy and Practice, 2nd edition, Chapter 1, page 60,
Problems, Questions 1 and 2.

4. (i) Define GDP and explain the difference between nominal GDP and real GDP.
(ii) Carefully explain the composition of the four components of GDP. Pay close
attention to what is and isn’t included in each component.
(iii) Explain the strengths and weaknesses with using the rate of economic growth as
a measure of the standard of living.
(iv) Why should comparisons of economic growth rates between countries be treated
with caution?

5. Assume that a woman has a butler and they decide to get married. The new husband is
very good and continues to wait on his wife ‘hand and foot’ while she continues her usual
paid employment. What is the affect that his marriage has on GDP? What does this tell
you about the accuracy of GDP?

6. Mishkin (2015), Macroeconomics: Policy and Practice, 2nd edition, Chapter 2, page 89,
Review Questions, Question 9.

7. How does the introduction of a new, improved television (TV) sold at a similar price as an
earlier model affect the consumer price index (CPI)?

8. Calculate the unemployment rate from the below data. Based on what you know about
how the unemployment rate is measured, is this likely to be an overestimate or an
underestimate of the actual rate of unemployment? Explain.

Employed people: 11 909 900

Unemployed people: 739 400
Population: 24 000 500
Job vacancies: 167 000