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POL PPE1 - Microeconomics

Faculty
TBA
Course Coordinator
Kelly Foley
Course content, structure and teaching
This course provides a basic understanding of the functioning of the markets: it describes what lies behind the notions of demand and supply. Concerning demand, emphasis is on the behavioural assumptions that generate the demand of a particular product. Concerning supply the emphasis is on whether the producers of a particular product compete in a perfect or an imperfect way. By the end of the course we integrate the two sides of the market and focus on the general equilibrium functioning of an economy and on the role of the government. The main blocks of the curriculum are: Supply and Demand; Consumer theory: rational and behavioural description of preferences and tastes; Producer theory: production and costs functions; Market structure: perfect competition, monopoly, monopolistic competition, oligopoly; General equilibrium theory; Public goods, externalities, and income distribution.
Learning Objectives
After having followed the course the students should be able to:
  • Explain basic economic terminology (as e.g. opportunity costs, public goods) in a comprehensive and intuitive way.
  • Describe and justify the main assumptions behind simple economic models as e.g. the demand and supply model, the perfect competition model, the monopoly model, etc.
  • Illustrate diagrammatically these models and perform policy experiments (e.g. introducing taxes).
  • Derive numerically economic instruments and learn how to use them in practice (e.g. price elasticity, Lerner Index, etc.).
  • Uolve algebraically simple microeconomic models (e.g. demand=supply, profit maximization, etc.) in order to determine the equilibrium economic variables (e.g. price, quantity, profit, etc.), and reflect on the solutions with a critical mind (e.g. price and quantity cannot take negative values while profits can take negative values in the short run).
  • Use economic intuition to explain topical policy issues (e.g. why are housing taxes popular among economists?).
Type of examination, exam aids and assessment
4 hour written exam, open book
Course literature
tba

Last updated by CBS International 03/05/2010