Acquisition of basic knowledge to understand the functioning of the economic system as a whole, through a course that includes lessons and exercises. In the first part of the course, the lessons aim to introduce the student to the knowledge of the economic quantities covered by the discipline such as domestic product, total expenditure for consumption and investment, the global level of employment and unemployment, the general level of prices, the state budget and foreign trade flows; subsequently the course provides the basic tools for understanding and comparing the main theoretical interpretations of the functioning of the macroeconomic system and the economic policy prescriptions deriving from it.