COURSE SYLLABUS
Principles of Microeconomics
Autumn 2015
BEIJING NORMAL UNIVERSITY
Time: Tues & Thurs 2:00-4:00 pm
Location: To be decided
Lecturer: Prof. ###
Contact Info:
Prerequisite: The course will include some basic uni-variate calculus material.
Overview:
Principles of Microeconomics is an introductory undergraduate course that teaches the fundamentals of microeconomics. This is the first course that undergraduates take in economics. For some, it may be the only course they take in the subject, and it provides a solid foundation for economic analysis and thinking that can last throughout their education and subsequent professional careers. For other students, it may provide a foundation for many years of study in economics, business, or related fields.
The course begins with an introduction to supply and demand and the basic forces that determine an equilibrium in a market economy. Next, it introduces a framework for leaning about consumer behavior and analyzing consumer decision. We then turn our attention to firms and their decisions about optimal production, and the impact of different market structures on firm’s behavior. The final section of the course provides an introduction to factor markets, and the theory of income distribution.
By the end of the course, you will be able to understand introductory microeconomic theory, solve basic microeconomic problems, and use these techniques to think about a number of policy questions relevant to the operation of the real economy.
Teaching Approach:
Lectures, laboratory, discussion section etc.
Texts and Materials:
Required Textbooks:
N. Gregory Mankiw, Principles of Microeconomics (Sixth Edition), South-Western Cengage learning, 2011.
Paul A. Samuelson, William D. Nordhaus, Economics (19th Edition), MacGraw-Hill/Lrwin, 2009.
Further Readings:
Pindyck & Rubinfeld, Microeconomics (8th Edition), Prentice Hall, 2012.
Hal R. Varian, Intermediate Microeconomics: A modern approach (8th Edition), W.W. Norton & Company, 2009.
Grading:
The course participants will be evaluated based on their attendance and in-class participation, the quality of their project work, the middle term exam, and the final exam.
Attendance and in-class participation: 10%
Project work: 20%
Midterm Exam: 30%
Final Exam: 40%
Project work: You are required to submit a short paper (less than 1000 words) at the end of semester by using a principle, or principles, discussed in the course to pose and answer an interesting question about some pattern of events or behavior that you personally have observed in real economy.
Course Schedule:
1. Introduction (10 hours lectures and laboratory, including 2-hour in-class discussion)
Topics: Development and evolution of economics, scientific method of economics, fundamental assumptions of economics
Purpose:
-Understand the similarity and difference between modern and classical economics.
-Understand the basic scientific research method and learning approaches of economics.
-Understand generally the philosophy, the subjects and the objectives of microeconomics through its fundamental assumptions.
-Familiarize the basic structure of the theory of microeconomics.
2. Demand and Supply (8 hours lectures and laboratory, including 1-hour in-class discussion)
Topics：The model of supply and demand, the determination of price
Purpose:
-Understand how supply and demand together set the price of a good.
-Understand the concept of elasticity (the sensitivity of the quantity supplied and quantity demanded to changes in economic variables).
-Analyze how government price policy affects real economy using the theory of equilibrium price.
-Understand the relationship between price elasticity of demand and total revenue.
3. Consumer behavior (10 hours lectures and laboratory, including 1-hour in-class discussion)
Topics：Utility theory, indifference curve, consumer behavior
Purpose:
-Understand the concepts of utility, marginal utility, marginal rate of substitution, consumer equilibrium etc.
-Learn to explain the law of demand and the consumer behavior using simple diagrams such as indifference curve and the budget line.
4. Production theory (6 hours lectures and laboratory, including 1-hour in-class discussion)
Topics：Production function, relationship between inputs and outputs (short-run &s long-run)
Purpose:
-Understand the relationship between total production, average production and marginal production, the law of diminishing marginal return, and optimum combination of factors of production in the short-run production function.
-Understand the characteristics of isoquants and returns to scale in the long-run production function.
5. Cost theory (4 hours lectures and laboratory, including 1-hour in-class discussion)
Topics：Costs in the short run and in the long run, the relationship between production and costs
Purpose:
-Understand the basic concepts of costs
-Understand the shape of a typical firm’s cost curves and their corresponding functions in the short run and long run, and their relationships.
6. Market theory (6 hours lectures and laboratory, including 1-hour in-class discussion)
Topics: Firm’s profit maximization in different market structure
Purpose:
-Understand total revenue, average revenue, marginal revenue, producer’s surplus etc.
-Understand conditions of equilibrium and the supply curve of firm and industry in different market structures.
-Understand the characteristics of production for increasing-cost, decreasing-cost and constant-cost industries.
-Analyze the market equilibrium using simple models.
7. Income distribution theory (4 hours lectures and laboratory, including 1-hour in-class discussion)
Topics: The link between inputs and their cost and revenue, Equilibrium in the factor markets
Purpose:
-Analyze factor markets by applying the theory of markets for goods and services
-Understand the determination of the price for the factors.
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