Microeconomics

Catalog description

Economics studies how agents make decisions under conditions of scarcity and uncertainty. This course provides a rigorous introduction to economics, with special emphasis on microeconomics. It will introduce you to economics as a discipline and as a way of thinking. It will also provide you with a set of tools, which will be very useful in other economics courses. We will first study the behavior of individual consumers and firms. Then we will give you some insight into how markets work and whether market outcomes are desirable. We will also look at situations in which the firm is a monopolist, or competes with a limited number of rivals. Some key concepts we will introduce include economic incentives, marginal analysis, opportunity cost (which costs matter), market efficiency (what does it mean for a market to work) and strategic behavior (how to predict and respond to your rivals’ decisions). The tools that you will be acquainted with in this class are fundamental for most upper division courses of the Economics major as well as classes in Finance, Accounting and Marketing. Prerequisites: Calculus or above. Fulfillment: Economics Major Requirements; IMB Major Business Elective; Social Science Major Foundational Courses; BUSF/BUSM Business Core Courses; Data Science Major Concentration in Finance/Marketing/Economics.