The US economy is not only the world´s largest, but also one of the most free-market developed economies; and its data is abundant and excellent. It provides an ideal opportunity for students to review the basic macroeconomic and policy variables and relationships, and to identify these or detect their absence in the real world. In the process, they can make the first steps toward determining how “normal” or especially good situations provide business opportunities and how departures from the rules point up situations that are risky for businesses operating in that country.

Japan, also one of the world's giants, has followed a particular growth and development strategy which is reflected in its macroeconomic and international data. We will explore in this segment Japan's data, in contrast to the United States, and find the unique policy challenges that this strategy presents for Japan, and the opportunities and risks that it implies for investors.

The EU is the world's largest trading area and if it were a country, it would be one of the world's largest. European nations opted for an intense project of economic integration in the postwar period which has incorporated 28 nations, but one of them, the UK, is in the process of leaving. We will discuss in this section how this type of integration conditions growth, crisis and recovery, and the mechanisms that countries with a single monetary policy and a single currency have (and do not have) to adjust their economies. What did we learn from the Eurozone crisis and the vote by so many UK citizens to leave Europe, and what are the implications for businesses operating in this region?

The final segment of the course turns toward the two emerging giants, India and China, and contemplates their past and future development strategies and thee risks and opportunities that they entail. Development itself is discussed, and how it occurs, and the strategies that nations may choose. The different components of GDP (C, I, G and X-M) are compared between India and China over a long period, to see what have been the different drivers for growth in the two countries over time. Special attention is paid in this section to institutional indicators, which are very different from developed countries, and the divergent demographic trends in the two countries; and the implications of those differences for the future.