Introduction to Microeconomics Syllabus: Fall 2008 "our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become"

Introduction

Welcome to ECN201, an Introduction to Microeconomic Principles. It is important to understand right up front what this course is all about - what will be my responsibilities and what will be your responsibilities. 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. This course is built upon what might be called the "First Law of Economics" - there is no free lunch - and if you are going to learn some economics you are going to work - you are going to read articles from the "popular" press in addition to more traditional textbooks, "push" around some numbers, get pretty good at reading graphs, learn some basic economic principles - and you will do it using IT. The good news is that the investment will be worth it and I am confident the material will prove to be important far after the course is over because it is true that "[t]he language of public policy is increasingly the language of economics."

The focus of this course will be on the behavior of individual decision makers - what makes people and businesses "tick" - and the functioning of markets that are at the center of the capitalist system in which we live. Some of the questions we'll look into are: What will happen to the price of airline travel if we continue to loose airline companies? What will happen to the starting salaries of college grads by the time you graduate? How much will that first house cost you when you are ready to buy? What will happen to the price of 'pot' if it is legalized? How can we explain the downsizing of American companies and the "offshoring" of American jobs - and what will be the impact on your future? How can we best deal with pollution problems such as acid rain and global warming? What is the future of public education, and should we have a casino in the state? 

The semester's course is divided into three sections Introduction to the Basics, The Ideal World of Microeconomics, and The Real World of Microeconomics. In Introduction to the Basics, you will be introduced to some of the basic tools and concepts you will use for the entire semester - the same ones you will need when you get into that "real world." In The Ideal World of Microeconomics you will look carefully at the two central players in the economy - individuals and the firms - by getting "inside their heads" to see what makes them "tick." This is the part of the course where you pay your dues - where you learn the basic concepts and the jargon - and then mix these firms and individuals together with some real competition. The result is a utopia of sorts that sets the stage for The Real World Microeconomics where you explore the behavior of individuals who may not act rationally and firms that exercise market power. The possibilities of non rational consumers and market power wielding firms opens the door for a reassessment of the role of the third major player in the economy - government - and the course closes with an examination of the evolution of thinking on government's proper role in managing the economy. This work will allow us to make a reasonable assessment of national security strategies, such as the US invasion of Iraq; tax policies, such as George Bush's elimination of death taxes and his cut in income tax rates; environmental legislation, such as Bush's Healthy Forests and Clear Skies initiatives; or policies such as the No Child Left Behind legislation and the privatization of Social Security.

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.

Goals

The goals for the course are specified in terms of what you should be able to do when the course is over rather than on what I will do in the course, and they should provide a guide to what I will be looking to for in your work. When you leave this course you should see the world a bit differently. It is not uncommon for students to say they "learned a lot about the world in this course," which is the way I want it to be. My job is to help you bridge the gap between "theory" and "reality," and along the way you will learn about that "real" world into which you will be graduating. It turns out that there are a few basic economic principles that will prove invaluable to you as you try to make sense of that real world, regardless of your major or career choice, and this course was designed around the core principles. Although there are limits to what can and will happen in one course, what I can tell you is that this course was designed in such a way that your success will mean that by the time you have successfully completed this course you will have demonstrated an ability to: 

	effectively utilize the Internet for finding information
	think critically in order to solve problems
	understand more of the business news including the financial pages
	identify the 'economic logic' or 'economic principles' useful in interpreting current or historical events and public policy proposals and / or decisions
	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
	explain to your parents and/or friends the function and characteristics of an economic system
	describe the characteristics of the three "primary" economic systems and the evolution of the market system
	describe the broad outlines of the major ideological views on economic systems and identify the ideological position of a writer or speaker
	demonstrate an ability to effectively use and interpret tables, graphs, and equations
	demonstrate an understanding of the basic economic concept of opportunity cost and use possibility curves to describe choice situations
	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
	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
	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
	describe the changing role and financing of government in modern society
	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.

Structure

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 Web CT, an interface between you and the material.

Once you are into Web CT 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 that 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 some, and others are posted on URI's online reserves.  

Online reserves can be found at the Helin site that is on the URI Library web site. Once there all you need to do is search for my courses by instructor's name and you will find the list of articles. To access the articles you will need your students ID because you will need to read the bar code if you are off campus. And you will need to get your ID validated to use the online reserves by taking it to the circulation desk at the library.

The Review Quizzes are interactive 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 this reason each unit has an interactive quiz to give you an opportunity to test your understanding of the concepts and principles introduced in the unit. For each unit of the course these quizzes provide some practice with multiple choice questions drawn from previous exams. These quizzes are timed to provide you with a sense of working under a time constraint. You access these quizzes off the main Web CT page. Finally, you are allowed to take each quiz four times and the results are not recorded and do not enter into your grade for the course.  

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. 

The Communications page is where you will find a link to Mail and a link to Discussions.  You should check these on a regular basis since this is used as a means of getting information to you regarding the course. You should use web CT email to get in touch with me rather than my regular email and you should monitor the Course Info discussion 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. 

The Information Sources page links you to an index of sources of economic data and information.  

In addition to these icons on the homepage, there are two additional links that you may want to use.  The Course Outline links you to an outline of the important concepts in the course that should be a good guide for your studies for the exams, while Some Important Equations links you to a summary of some of the important equations you will be called upon to master during the semester.

Evaluation

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 a "HOT" topic - climate change - 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 your 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. 

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. 

What You Need to Purchase

There will be 3 things you need to purchase for this course. First, you need to purchase a handout at i-copy located at the Emporium. Included in the handout will be much of the slides that will be discussed during class periods and it will become your notebook. Second, there is a clicker you need to purchase at the bookstore. Third, you need to register for the clicker online, and here are the instructions for activating the clickers. You must do this within the first week, so get to it. As for the textbook readings, they are available online and are accessible via Web-CT. If you want to purchase a copy of the readings they are available at i-copy.

How to Succeed

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 "Psst! 'Human Capital," a very brief op-ed piece from the New York Times, and then think about some of the following suggestions.

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.