“People have exactly what they want in life, not what they think they want”

Syllabus Web CT
Fall 2004

Introduction

Welcome to the online version of ECN201, an Introduction to Microeconomic Principles.  Because this is an economics course you will be hearing a lot about choices. At the core of economics is the problem of scarcity: there is simply not enough time or money to go around - so choices need to be made continuously, and economists study these choices.  Scarcity imposes many choices on students: do I major in Marketing or English? do I take a computer course?  Experience has shown some students approach these choices head on and others avoid them, but no one escapes them.  The same is true of the choices we make concerning the balancing of our professional and personal lives and the balancing of consumption for today against investment for tomorrow.  Do I go to the movie or work on the research paper?   Do I spend Saturday on the new project at work or go to the kid's concert or ball game?  Do I buy a new "hot car" or do I put the money into a mutual fund to pay for the down payment on a house? Despite the PR executives continuously telling us, "You can have it all," in most cases we cannot have it all and we need to make choices.  It should not take long to figure out that there will be no shortage of "experts" telling you how to make those choices.  So be careful who you allow to influence your choices.

Scarcity has also imposed on all societies the need to allocate resources and to develop an "economic systems" that will solve the basic economic questions of What to produce, How to produce it, and to Whom it gets distributed? It does not matter whether we are talking about the ancient Chinese or Egyptian societies, Renaissance Europe, Colonial America, or modern Latin America.   In each society there was not enough to satisfy all wants so choices needed to be made.  Do we spend the money on missiles or health care; do we spend it on new highways or mass transit, education or recreation?  How do we allocate scarce parking spaces at URI?

The focus in this course will be on the behavior of individual decision makers and how this influences the prices you pay for things you buy and receive for things you sell. Some of the questions we will look into during the semester are: Why did you choose your major? Why did you choose URI? What is the cost of a year of your education? What will happen to the price of computers if we loose some computer 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?  How will the internet affect the prices you pay for cars and stock? What is the basis of the government cases against Microsoft and Intel?  How can we best deal with pollution problems such as acid rain and global warming? What is the future of public education? 

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. While you may not have a choice about taking this economics course, you do have a choice about what "version" of the course you take so you should be sure to read on so that you can make an informed choice.  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 should you should be able to do when the course is over rather than what I will do in the course. When you leave this course you should see the world a bit differently than when you enrolled even though many of you are here because you need to fulfill some curriculum requirement.  It turns out, however, there is a good reason for you being here -  there are a few basic economic principles that will prove valuable to you regardless of your major or career choice.  It has been my job to identify the core principles and design a course that will prove valuable to TMD majors and engineers, to Pharmacy majors and business school majors.  When this course is completed, you should be able to:

	understand more of the business news including the financial pages
	effectively utilize the internet for finding information
	think critically in order to solve problems
	demonstrate an ability to effectively use and interpret tables, graphs, and equations
	explain the link between economics and sustainability
	explain to your parents and/or friends the function of an economic system
	describe the three "primary" economic systems and the evolution of the market system
	describe the broad outlines of the major ideological views on economic systems
	demonstrate an understanding of the basic economic concept of opportunity cost
	use possibility curves to describe choice situations and alternative sources of growth
	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
	identify the strengths and basic shortcomings of the market system and some policy options for dealing with the short-coming
	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
	identify the economic theory that is the foundation for discussions of public policy proposals and / or decisions
	identify the 'economic logic' or 'economic principles' useful in interpreting current or historical events
	describe the changing patterns of spending and taxation for the federal, state, and local governments
	evaluate taxes in terms of the efficiency and equity criteria
	describe Bush's policies and explain what behaviors they might change 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 of the Web

The course you have signed up for contains the material of a traditional in-class microeconomics course delivered in an on-line format.  For many of us this course will be very different from what we are used to because all of the material is on-line which will require a little adjustment in how we work during the semester.  After some minor adjustments, you should have little trouble reading the course material online.  What is missing in the online version are the in-class discussions that have always been an important part of my courses, and an effort has been made to find an online substitute.  Participation has always mattered in my courses and it will continue to matter in the online version.  In the remainder of the syllabus the structure of the course will be described, so take some time to read it.  What you will find is that there is considerable flexibility in online courses in terms of when you do your work, but there are deadlines that are ABSOLUTE and you owe it to yourself to make sure you are aware of the deadlines.  I have talked with too may instructors who comment on the "missing" students in on-line courses, the student who disappears or who consistently misses assignments.  If you look at the grading scheme in the course you will note that there is little margin of error for the slow starter who misses a number of the early assignments or the prodigal student who disappears for a while during the course.  What you do not see is any opportunity for extra credit to compensate for missed deadlines.  So take the time to master the structure of the course before you commit yourself to it.  

This course will also require you to use Web CT, an interface between you and the material.  One thing you should not forget in Web CT is your password.  Once you are into Web CT you will find the Web CT home page that has four buttons that link to material for the course.  Each of these links is explained briefly below.  

The Schedule page should be monitored regularly because this is where you will find the weekly schedule of readings, assignments, quizzes, exams, and discussions.  You should also note that the deadlines are by the end of the day on Sunday to allow for you to catch up on the weekend.  For example, below you will find the entry from the schedule page for the first week of the course.  By the end of the day on September 12th the the Introduction Assignment will be due. 

  The Readings page links you to the textbook - or the closest you will come to one in the course.  This course is divided into three segments, each of which contains units that correspond to chapters in a book. Within each unit there are two components - Abstract and Readings.   To get an idea of what you will encounter in the unit you should read the Abstract.  The list of the three segments and units can be found in the Readings Page.  This is the equivalent of the Table of Contents in a traditional book.  The three segments are:

	Introduction to the Basics
	The Ideal World of Microeconomics
	The Real World of Microeconomics

For a "taste" of what to expect you can check out the readings for the the Data Analysis unit. 

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, ride a bike, or read - you get better at it if you practice.  For this reason a number of interactive quizzes to give you an opportunity to test your understanding of the concepts and principles introduced in the unit have been developed.  These quizzes will provide some practice with multiple choice questions drawn from previous exams.  You should take the quiz at the end of each unit to test your understanding.  You will access these quizzes off the main Web CT page.  These quizzes are timed to provide you with a sense of working under a time constraint.  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.  

The Assignment page is where you will find a set of assignments you will be responsible for during the semester.   

The Communications page is where you will find a link to mail and a link to discussions.  These links you should check on a regular basis since this will be used as a means of getting information to you regarding the course.  For example, during the semester there will be a few extra credit assignments that will be posted on mail.  These are designed to provide you with some experiences "using" economics and me with "evidence" you are willing to make the extra effort.  

This is also where you will find the links to the class discussion page, which is the online version of class participation.  During the semester you can expect that there will be a weekly set of discussions to which you will be expected to contribute.  As with the quizzes, you will not be expected to contribute to all discussions, but you are expected to make a meaningful contribution to seven discussions. 

  This is the  Syllabus page that provides the basic information on the course including the goals, course requirements, and grading procedure. 

  The Exams page provides a link to earlier exams that should help you prepare for the exams. 

  The News page links you to an index of newspapers and magazines.

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

Evaluation 

How you should be evaluated is always the tough question, especially in an online course such as this one.  What you should know at the outset is that this is a General Education course and therefore you will be being evaluated not only on your command of economic principles and concepts but also on basic skills identified in the General Education program.  The University's General Education that skills you will be evaluated on in this course are Read Complex Texts, Use of Quantitative Data, and Use of Information Technology.  The opportunity to demonstrate your command of these economic concepts and principles and general education skills will arise continuously throughout the course. You should make an effort to distinguish yourself in the class. If you cannot distinguish yourself here, then where?  Fortunately you will have a number of opportunities to do so during the semester.  During the semester you will be expected to post at least one article to the Discussion part of the course and participate in discussions based on two other postings for a total of three postings.  On Web CT's Discussion link you will find a preliminary list of discussion topics and during the semester additional discussion topics will be added to the course.  If I post an article to one of the discussion lists then you may find a question on the article on a semester exam. Also, if you have any questions regarding course requirements or material, you should post them to the course info discussion list. There also will be assignments that YOU WILL BE REQUIRED TO PASS IN - AND IT MUST BE TYPED.  The list of assignments may change over the semester so you should monitor regularly the Schedule and the e-mail pages.  These assignments will be worth 15 points on your final grade and you will be expected to do 5 assignments and you will be graded on the first five assignments so there is no incentive to do extra ones to build up your assignment grade. 

In addition to the discussions and assignments, there will also be the exams - two semester exams and a final exam. The exams in this course will focus primarily on your skill at applying the principles and concepts discussed in the course rather than on your recall skills.  When constructing the exams I have the choice of asking you to recall material covered in the class material and assigned readings or ask you entirely new questions requiring you to apply basic principles and concepts discussed in the readings.  For many, maybe most of you, the first is a framework you have become accustomed to in your travels through the education system.  While it has its place, it will not be employed here because you are not in training to be practicing economists and thus there is no need for an encyclopedic approach to the course.  Furthermore, each test is constructed based upon the assumption that it is an open-book open-note exam - which is what it is in an online course.  Economics will matter to you because it helps you understand your world, because you can relate it to your work as a pharmacist, an accountant, or a retail buyer and no instructor can anticipate where it will come into play in your world. This means that the exams will tend to be difficult and the scores somewhat lower than if the questions had been recall questions.  To get you ready for the exams you should be sure to take the review quizzes.

In addition to the primary course readings for each unit, each of you will be expected to read on a regular basis the New York Times and some additional online articles and you can expect some questions to be on your readings.  I would strongly suggest that you subscribe to the New York Time's online version so that you will be able to receive daily updates directed to your e-mails since certain articles will be assigned during the semester and material from these articles may be included on the semester exams. 

The grades in the course will be based upon the following weighting scheme. 

So, as you begin to make your choices, keep in mind the fact your success in the future is likely to depend less on your major or your first employer and more on the skills you acquire, more on your creativity, originality and ability to think critically than on your ability to store and recall information. With a positive attitude and good choices, you can position yourself well for entry into the new "real world" and even have some fun in ECN 201.

Text

You should also note that there is not a textbook and that all of the materials that you will need are available on-line.