Economics 410 Intermediate Microeconomics Instructors Biglaiser Parreiras Office GA 306A [email protected] GA 200B [email protected] Office Hours T&TH 9:45-10:45 and by appointment T&TH 9:45-10:45 and by appointment Web http://blackboard.unc.edu/ Theme of the Course: This course is designed to teach the basic tools of microeconomic analysis. These tools will be useful in courses of applied microeconomics such as industrial organization, labor economics, trade and public finance. Grading Criteria: There will be three midterms and a final exam. The two highest midterm scores will each account for 30% of your grade. We will drop the lowest midterm score. The final will account for 40%. You are responsible for both the material presented in class and the assigned reading. The midterms are on 16 September, 14 October, and 16 November. The final is 16 December at 4pm . No makeup exams will be given. Course Philosophy: Learning by doing. We will suggest homework questions throughout the term. About every other week you will be asked to turn some of the homework questions in your recitation section. These questions will be evaluated to give you feedback on your answers. They will not be used as input for your grade. We strongly suggest that in order to acquire a working knowledge of the tools of microeconomic analysis that you do not restrict attention only to problems assigned in class or to those reviewed in class/recitation. Other policies: There are no partial regrades, any regrade request applies to the entire examination. Any e-mail communication with instructors or teaching assistants shall be throughout the UNC e-mail system; e-mails from gmail, hotmail, etc... may not be answered. Please do not use laptops or phones during the class meetings to surf the web or email. Course material will be posted on blackboard. Required Software: Mathematica which can be ordered (free of charges) at https://help.unc.edu/3705 (Onyen login required). Mathematica will be mainly needed in the second half of the course. Reading Material. Perloff’s Microeconomics: Theory and Applications with Calculus and other material. Outline of Course ----------------- I. Introduction 1. Preliminaries (1 and Mathematical Appendix A1-A6) 2. Basic Notions of Demand and Supply (2.1-2.4) 3. Elasticity and Applications (2.5-2.8) II. Consumer Theory 1. Preferences and Utility Functions (3.1, 3.2) 2. Budget Constraints (3.3) 3. Optimal Choice (3.4) 4. Demand Functions (4.1-4.4) 5. Income and Substitution Effects (4.3) 6. Consumer Welfare (5.1-5.3) 7. Applications (5.4-5.5) III. Producer Theory 1. Production Functions (6.1-6.4)2. Returns to Scale and Technological Progress (6.5-6.6) IV. Costs 1. Costs and Basic Problems (7.1-7.5) V. The Competitive Model 1. Model (8.1) 2. Profit Maximization (8.2) 3. Short Run Equilibrium (8.3) 4. Long Run Equilibrium (8.4) 5. Applications (9.1-.9.5) VI Market Power I 1. Basic Monopoly (11.1-11.8) 2. Price Discrimination (12.1-12.6) VII. Market Power II 1. Defining a Market (13.1) 2. Oligopoly Experiment 3. Static Game Theory (14.1) 4. Homogeneous Products Oligopoly (13.3-13.7) 5. Repeated Games and Collusion (14.3,13.2) VII. Topics 1. Risk (16.1-16.4) 2. Adverse Selection (18.1-18.5 3. Moral Hazard (19.1-19.6) 4. Auctions (14.4) 5. General Equilibrium (10.1-16.7) 6. Externalities (17.6) 7. Public Goods