Week 12 Syllabus

Mr. Ditzenberger-Economics
Lessons: GDP and Economic Challenges
Time: Week 12, April 7th-11th
Unit: Measuring Economic Performance
Objectives:
1. Students will define the key terms and concepts related to GDP, the business cycle, and factors of economic growth.
2. Students will simulate a production situation and relate it to standards of living as well as analyze the cost and benefits of increasing capital to improve production and profits.

Monday
1. In groups of three, each student picks five companies, issues bonds at different par values, coupon rates, and maturity times. Papers are exchanged and the person who received their examples needs to figure out the total amount of money that they would earn on their bond.
2. Develop a skit where you are a financial advisor and a customer of yours is in their 20s, 30s, 40, 50, or 60s (ages will be assigned). Each customer wants to spend between 20 and 50% of their money in bonds. Using terms in your book, explain the pros and cons of at least three types of bonds and then give your recommendation to your customer.
1. Homework: Read Chapter 11, Section 3, The Stock Market.
2. Homework: LTE 150-169 for Friday.
3. Homework. Each person go to the interactive chart (http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/interchart/interchart.asp?symb=&time=&freq=) and enter a company’s ticker symbol. Do this five times for five different companies. Under chart options choose five years or one decade and yearly. Scroll down to lower indicators and choose P/E ratio. Choose a company to purchase based on the advice given on page 150 in LTE and your analysis of the P/E ratio of the given companies. Each team should choose at least two companies to purchase (that haven’t been purchased already) based on these findings. The purchase should be made by Wednesday evening. Each team should give me a list of the companies that were purchased given the P/E ration research. Provide how much was invested and the reason for choosing that company. Due Thursday at the end of school.

Tuesday
1. John Honeyman

Wednesday
1. Test

Thursday.
1. GDP Lecture.
2. P/E decisions for teams due.

Friday.
1. Lecture-GDP continued
2. LTE 150-169 time permitting.