Introduction to Microeconomics
Syllabus
Fall 2009
"our
background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are
responsible for who we become"
Introduction
Welcome
to Introduction to Microeconomic Principles. It is
a wonderful time to be taking an economics course and
I am confident the material will prove to be important far after the course is
over. Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary and President of
Harvard, was right when he wrote, "[t]he language of public policy is
increasingly the language of economics," so think of this course as an
investment in the basics that will allow you to better understand truly
important public policy choices that will be made in your lifetime. It is also
a time to brush up on some important skills. This course is a General
Education course where the three required skills are your ability to Read
Complex Texts, Use of Quantitative Data,
and Use of Information Technology. To succeed you will
need to read articles from the "popular" press and "push"
around some numbers - and you will be using IT to do it.
The
focus of this course will be on the behavior of individual decision makers -
what makes people and businesses "tick" – why do they do what
they do – and how might we alter what they do? We also look carefully at the
functioning of markets to better understand prices that have such an influence
on our lives. The fact is we are engaged in an ongoing “battle” with businesses
in the marketplace, and we’ll look into the factors that affect the balance of
power, and what is likely to happen to this balance in the near future. We’ll
also talk bout market failures that help explain why we find it so difficult to
deal with climate change, and how we might address this issue that could be one
of the defining issues of your generation.
Before
you move on to the content of the course, you should stop to review the
course's goals to see if they are consistent
with your goals. You should also check out the method of evaluation and text and a brief overview of the structure of the web. When you are ready you
should check out the schedule for
the course that will link you to the readings and assignments for each
day. You should also note that there will be a concept that reappears
continuously throughout the semester - sustainability. It is not
inherently an economics concept, but it is a critically important concept and
one that has an important economic dimension.
The
goals of the course are specified in terms of what you should be able to do
when the course is over and not what we will do during the course. The
course is designed to help you bridge the gap between "theory" and
"reality," and along the way you should learn quite a bit about that "real"
world into which you will be graduating. There are a few basic economic
principles that will be valuable to you regardless of your major or career
choice, and we'll start with them. Another feature of the course is its
emphasis is on thinking critically and solving problems rather than
memorizing. The good news is these are THE skills demanded in today's
dynamic work force. The bad news is this is not easy. In fact it is quite
difficult so you will need to practice at it, which is why there are many
opportunities during the semester to practice. As for the goals, when this
course is completed, you should be able to:
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effectively
utilize the Internet for finding information |
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think
critically in order to solve problems |
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understand
more of the business news including the financial pages |
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identify
the 'economic logic' or 'economic principles' useful in interpreting current
or historical events and public policy proposals and
/ or decisions |
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contribute
meaningfully to discussions/argue a position on public policy and election
issues such as raising the minimum wages, legalization of drugs,
environmental protection and global warming, reigning in the power of large
companies such as Microsoft, and immigration restriction |
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explain
to your parents and/or friends the function and characteristics of an
economic system |
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describe
the characteristics of the three "primary" economic systems and
the evolution of the market system |
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describe
the broad outlines of the major ideological views on economic systems and
identify the ideological position of a writer or speaker |
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demonstrate
an ability to effectively use and interpret tables, graphs, and equations |
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demonstrate
an understanding of the basic economic concept of opportunity cost and use
possibility curves to describe choice situations |
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demonstrate
an understanding of the supply and demand model
of prices by using models to explain past changes in prices and
formulate 'forecasts' for prices |
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explain
what behavior we can expect from "rational" individuals and
profit-seeking firms and describe the implications of the
"ideal" market system with perfect competition in a world of
rational actors |
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identify
the basic shortcomings of the "ideal" market system such as
imperfect rationality, externalities, and imperfect competition and
policy options for dealing with the short-comings |
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describe
the changing role and financing of government in modern society |
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identify
current public policies and explain what behaviors they might alter and who
will be the beneficiaries of the policies |
If you are to achieve these goals, then it is important to
invest a little time now to understand the basic structure of the course
including the web material and the grading.
For most of you this course will be very different from what you
are used to because all of the material is on-line, which will require a little
adjustment in how you work during the semester. It will also require you to use
Sakai, an interface between you and the material.
Once you are into Sakai you will find the following parts to the
course that can be found behind icons appearing on the home page for the
course. Each of these links is explained briefly below.
The Schedule page is
where you will find the schedule for readings, exams, quizzes, extra credit
opportunities and practice quizzes. This page
should be monitored regularly because this includes all of
the deadlines you need to meet during the semester.
The Readings page links
you to the textbook - or the closest you will come to one in the course. Under
the Readings heading you will find two sets of readings. The first are the
equivalent of the textbook and they are available online. Also included are
outside readings drawn from newspapers, magazine, and academic journals. You
will find links to all of those.
The Review
Problems are quizzes that provide you an opportunity to
"practice" your skills at economics before the exams because learning
to "do economics" is like learning to play tennis or the oboe, ride a
bike, or read - you get better at it if you practice. For each unit of
the course these quizzes provide some practice with multiple-choice questions
drawn from previous exams. You will find the Review Quizzes on the Schedule
page. I encourage you to work on these problems, and if you have
questions, then come bring them to the TA or me to discuss them.
On the Exams page you
will find a copy of exams from a previous year PLUS copies of each of this
semester's exams that will be posted soon after the exam is taken along with
the answer key and a brief description of the correct answer. You should check
out the answers to determine your grade and make sure you agree with the
answers since there have been instances in the past where students have raised
legitimate concerns regarding the answers. If you have any questions you
should email me with your question or you should stop by and see me in my
office.
To
communicate with each other there are the Messages and Forum links
You should check these on a regular basis. You should use Sakai’s messages that
are the equivalent of mail to get in touch with me rather than my regular email
and you should monitor the Announcements regularly
since this is where any important information of schedule changes will be
posted. Microeconomics tends to show up in the news frequently and
during the semester there will be postings on important issues in Microeconomics
in the News. During the semester you will see my postings
of articles in the FYI discussions, and I encourage you
to post anything you find that you think is interesting.
In
addition to these icons on the homepage, there is the Course Outline link on
the Syllabus and Schedule page that links you to an outline of the important
concepts in the course that should be a good guide for your studies for the
exams. You will find the course outline printed in the first pages of the class
handout you’ll here more about later.
Your course grade will be based on a number of requirements that
you should be aware of at the outset since the large size of the class combined
with the number of requirements makes it impossible to allow any late
work. You need to know what you are responsible for - and when it is
due. Here is the list of requirements for the course.
Assignments: There
are assignments you will be required to hand in during the semester and they MUST BE TYPED
AND HANDED IN ON THE DEADLINE. THEY MUST INCLUDE THE # OF THE ASSIGNMENT
AND TITLE AS WELL AS YOUR NAME. You will have
flexibility in terms of which assignments you do, but none in terms of when
they are due. The list of assignments may change over the semester so you
should monitor regularly the Schedule and the Discussions. You
will be responsible for ONLY four of the
assignments and these assignments will represent 15% of the final
grade. You will receive NO extra credit for doing more than four
assignments. You will also note that for each of the assignments you will
need to choose one question that usually involves reading an article or
attending a presentation for the URI Honors
Colloquium. This semester the Colloquium is on an important country - India
- and I encourage you all to attend as many of the public lectures as possible
on this critically important issue. Events take place on Tuesday evenings
at 7:30 p.m in Chafee Auditorium on URI's main campus in Kingston. Exceptions
are noted in the schedule.
Discussions: You will be
required to participate in online debates during the semester. You will need to
post at least one interesting article with some comment and participate in at
least one discussion. Microeconomics is always in the news, and you will need
to be part of the discussion. This will account for 5% of your grade.
Exams: In
addition to the assignments, there will be three semester exams (in our
classroom during normal class times) and a final exam (in our classroom at a
time determined by the University). If you receive no grade
lower than a B on the three semester exams you will
be given the opportunity to skip the final exam - a reward for consistently
good work. The exams will focus on your skill at solving problems by applying
the principles and concepts discussed in the course. Think of
the exams as a set of word problems from high school, so you know that
the exams will tend to be difficult and the scores somewhat lower than if the
questions had been recall questions. Before you
take the first test you should review the first test from a previous year that
can be found on the Exam Page and take the practice quizzes. This
will give you a better idea of what to expect, which should help reduce the
surprise effect on that first exam - and improve your grade.
The grades in the course will be based upon the following weighting
scheme.
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Exams |
80 |
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worst semester exam |
10 |
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best semester exams |
50 |
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final exam |
20 |
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Assignments
(first 4) |
15 |
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Discussions |
5 |
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Total |
100 |
And then there is class attendance. While I realize the temptation
to cut class is higher in a large class (an example of opportunity cost),
attendance does matter and it may be factored into your final grade. For
those students that miss more than four classes during the semester, you may be
penalized up to a grade point for every class above the four you miss. Also, in
this course I will follow the procedure outlined in the University manual and
any registered student will be dropped from the course if they miss the first
two classes.
Finally, there is the question of how you are doing. After
each exam you will find the answer key posted on the Exams page that will allow
you to grade your exam and determine your score. With this score you can
then use the scale for the exam that will also be posted on the Exams
page. You will also find a record of your scores on the exams posted on
the My Record page.
There will be 2 things you could purchase for this course. First, you need to
purchase a handout at i-copy located at
the Emporium. Included in the handout will be most of the slides that will
be discussed during class periods and it will become your notebook. Second, the
readings for the course are available online and are accessible via Sakai, but
I encourage you to consider buying a copy that can be purchased at I-copy.
If you got this far, you have already demonstrated an interest in
doing well, so think about the following "Tips for Success" that I have
learned from talking with students about their successes and failures in the
course. Isaac Newton once explained his greatness by noting that "I
stand upon the shoulders of the giants of the past," and you will have the
chance to learn from those who came before you. As a starter, I would
suggest you read
1.
show up: what do you say to a student who
writes you a letter describing the problems they had with the class and you see
he/she has missed half the classes. I am more inclined to give the F they
"earned" rather than the sympathy they seek. Also, there is a
statistical relationship between attendance and grades, so keep this in mind as
you think about not showing up.
2.
read: imagine my surprise when I asked
a failing student if they had done the readings and the response was "some
of them." The exams are built on the readings and the class
discussions, so I would expect the non reading student "earned" that
F.
3.
practice: Every exam question is a word
problem, so you need to get good at identifying problems - and solving them -
and you get good with practice. So do the review quizzes and the practice
exams to get yourself ready for the real exam.
4.
practice more: It was worth repeating because
practicing is crucial. But make the practice useful, so when you do those
exams and quizzes, do them alone. Too often I see caring students do
awful because they work with friends on the quizzes, and not surprisingly the
group does well, but there is no group when you do the exams. Work with
the group after you have done the quizzes alone and compare results - but do
them alone.
5.
manage your time: What do you tell a flunking
student who works 35+ hours a week and takes a full-time load? I tend
toward telling them that Superman and Superwoman were only imaginary
superheroes. While I know school is not cheap, this is a recipe for disaster
for the overwhelming majority of students. You need to manage your time,
and why not start where most of your instructors did when they were in
college. You have 15 hours of classes, and each hour of class "comes
with" three hours outside of class - so now we are talking 15 +45 = 60
hours, which is more than a full-time job. Add on to that those 35 hours
of work and you are at 95 hours - and you only have 168 hours in a week.
This gives you about 10 hours for sleeping, eating, and .... You get the picture.
6.
turn off those cell phones: While
time is scarce and must be managed, you can also do things that help you get
more out of your time. As a starter, turn off those cell phones.
How can you really study if the cell phone is continuously interrupting
you? You can't, so take some time during the day where your friends and
family know you are "off line It will not take long for "the
world" to realize you are busy and they must work around your work
schedule.
So
now let's get to the course, and take the first step toward a successful
semester.