Tags
[BSc], GED, ID, PSc, Ec
Admission requirements
- Classes of 2013-2016: similarly-tagged 100/200-level courses or permission from the instructor.
Course description
Microeconomics begins with the study of individual decisions before moving to the interactions of individuals making decisions. (Macroeconomics tends to emphasize the aggregated outcomes of decisions.) We will follow this route with an emphasis on how people interact in strategic (game theory) and social (interdependency) environments. After covering demand and supply, we will compare markets and prices to monopolies with power, bureaucracies with regulations, and rms that innovate. We will conclude with market failures and government failures.
Themes: The interaction of decisions under dierent conditions of market power. The impact of information, risk, uncertainty, time and space on these decisions.
Learning objectives
Students will master and apply basic economic concepts to everyday examples. Students will be able to analyze cases studies using cost-benet analysis.
Compulsory literature
Required: Schumacher, E.F. (1973), Small is Beautiful. Harper Perennial
Required: Assigned academic articles
Optional: Brue, Stanley L., Campbell R. McConnell and Sean M. Flynn (2013), Essentials of Economics, 3rd International Student Edition, Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. ISBN 978-1-259-01-06040-3