Principles of Microeconomics

Catalog description

An introductory course using microeconomic models to understand individual decisions by consumers and firms, market outcomes including market failure, elasticity, market structures, labor markets, inequality, and the impact of government policies. This course provides students with the basic analytical tools necessary to analyze the U.S. economy from the microeconomic perspective. The course includes an examination of the core economic problem of scarcity, the essentials of supply and demand analysis, and the workings of a market system; elasticity; costs of production; market structures of pure competition, monopoly, monopolistic competition, and oligopoly; marginal revenue productivity; theory of wage determination, unions, and government policies; applied cases of microeconomics such as the problems of agriculture, pollution, mal-distribution of income and international economics. Current economic problems are examined by guest and staff speakers from liberal, conservative, and a variety of modern perspectives. Formerly ECON 121. Not open to students with credit in ECON 121. (C-ID ECON 201) (CSU/UC) (AA/AS-4, CSU-D, IGETC-4, Cal-GETC-4)