Please read every section of this Syllabus fully and carefully before the course starts.

I.         Course Outline and Objectives

Microeconomics studies social and economic interactions at the micro level – that is, starting from the behavior of single economic actors or entities. The material covered in this course will equip you with tools to connect individual goal-oriented behavior with the resulting, sometimes counter-intuitive, social outcomes.

Our journey into microeconomics will start from an age-old challenge: how to coordinate the activities of free individuals, each seeking their own ends, so as to achieve socially desirable results? We will explore this issue using the language and tools of game theory. The framework that we will gradually build can be readily applied to the real-world issues which inspired many of you to take a course (or a major) in economics,   including market competition, economic development, inequality, and environmental sustainability.

During the course, we will explore in depth the relation between conflict and coordination and think about questions of efficiency and fairness. The course will also help you deconstruct the role of power, communication and bargaining in economic interactions. All these ideas will be explored with a strong foundation in actual behavioral tendencies of people. Our approach will make it clear that the insights of other disciplines – including history, sociology, law, and anthropology – are an integral part of economics.

Here’s a list of some of the ideas that we will go through during the course:

•    How do economic agents – people, firms, communities and governments – make choices? What social outcomes should we expect as a result of these choices?

•    When does the pursuit of self-interest by all individuals lead to socially efficient outcomes? When does it lead to outcomes that no one likes?

•    How does trade generate economic gains? What determines the distribution of these gains among different individuals and groups? Are they distributed equally or unequally?

•    Why and how do institutions (the ‘rules of the game’) and power affect the way people, firms, communities and governments interact?

•    How does the labor market work? What determines the wage level? Why is there some unemployment in all capitalist economies?

II.         Pre-requisites

Prerequisites: ECON 103 or RES-ECON 102, and one of the following courses - MATH 127, MATH 128,

MATH 131, MATH 132, ECON 151, or ECON 152.

Math pre-requisites

There are good reasons why having completed a math course is required in order to enroll in intermediate microeconomics. To do well in this course, you need some basic math skills. You should feel comfortable  interpreting  and  graphing  simple  mathematical  functions.  You  should  have  a  working knowledge  of  basic  calculus  –  this  involves  calculating  slopes  of  functions,  taking  derivatives,  and mathematical  optimization  (maximizing  and  minimizing  functions).  You  should  also  feel  comfortable solving a simple system of linear equations.

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TIP: Revise your math – now!

This course will be more exciting and insightful (and easier) to you if you feel comfortable with the math pre-requisites.  I’m  not saying this to turn you away from the course – and  it  is actually true of any intermediate microeconomics course. I am saying this so you go back and revise some of the math as soon as you get the chance. Doing it at the very beginning will make things much easier for you.

In the Moodle page of the course, you will find a “Math Review” section, with materials covering the main essential math pre-requisites. We will not discuss these in class (as they are pre-requisites to the content of the course, that you are supposed to already master), but you can go back to them whenever you feel like you need a math refresh.

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III.         Course Organization and Materials

A. Textbook

Samuel Bowles & Simon Halliday, Microeconomics: Competition, Conflict and Coordination (2020, Oxford University Press) A PDF copy of the textbook will be uploaded on Moodle at no cost for students.

B. Moodle

Moodle will be used to upload materials (including lecture notes), make announcements and administer assignments and quizzes.

C. Weekly readings

Reading regularly is key to success in this course. Given the nature of the compressed summer semester, some weeks we will cover two chapters of the textbook (the expected calendar of readings is outlined in Section IV below). For each assigned reading, there is a quiz to help ensure that you understand the reading materials (see section V for more information).

I  will  often  send  you  emails  and  post  new  materials  on  Moodle.  The  remote  modality  makes communication via email and Moodle even more central. In order to succeed in this course, you will need to stay updated by checking your UMass email and the Moodle page of the course regularly.

I welcome appropriate email queries and strive to respond to them within 24- 48 hours during the work week. Please note that this means your email sent on a Friday or a holiday would not receive a response until the next business day.

I will also hold weekly open office hours via Zoom (Wednesday 9:300 - 11:00 am). In the past, many students have found this to be a useful opportunity to ask questions about the course materials or help with the assignment. I hope you will take advantage of the office hour.

E. Statement on Due Dates and Late Assignment

All due dates are firm. This is an extremely fast-paced course that takes place during the Summer, when students and instructors alike are occupied with many concurrent responsibilities and engagement. Therefore, I will not grant deadline extension under any circumstances.

If you have a University-sanctioned reason or extenuating circumstances for missing the deadline, please communicate with me as soon as possible. Note that a conflict between your travel plan or summer job  and the assignment is normally not a valid extenuating circumstance. Penalty for late submission will be  determined on a case-by-case basis, possibly including a grade of zero (0) for late submission.

IV.         Course Schedule

V.          Assessment and Grading

The course requirements consist of:

•     8 reading-based quizzes (optional).

•     6 assignments, worth a total of 50% of your final grade

•     A mid-term exam and a final exam, each is worth 25% of your final grade

It is your responsibility to be aware of the quizzes and assignments posted on Moodle and their deadline.

A. Reading-based quizzes

Whenever you are assigned a reading, you will also have a quiz on the reading, to be completed on Moodle. There will be a total of 8 quizzes, correspond to 8 reading modules. These quizzes are designed to be a tool for you to self-test how well you understand the reading chapters.

When this course is offered in person, these quizzes are called ‘pre-lecture quizzes’ . They are designed so that you can do them after doing the reading, but you don’t need to have watched the lecture yet.  With asynchronous teaching, the lecture notes are always available to you, and you are welcome to review them while doing the quiz if you find that useful.

To accommodate the tight timeline of the summer course, I have made these quizzes optional. However I strongly recommend everyone to complete every quiz after you finish each reading, because it will help identify any blind spot in your knowledge, and things you might have not paid attention to while you read the chapters.

B. Assignments

There are 6 assignments, to be distributed and completed through Moodle. I will make available the  assignments on Moodle at least one week before they are due. You can make unlimited attempts but will not be able to see your score after each attempt. Only the last attempt will be graded.

Each assignment is worth 10% of your grade. The lowest-grade assignment will be automatically dropped.

C. Mid-term exam

The mid-term exam will be available on Moodle on August 5-6. You will be able to start at a time of your choice during that two-days window. Once started, it must be completed in 2 hours. It will have three kinds of questions: multiple choice questions; numerical exercises; short answer questions. The midterm exam will account for 25% of your grade.

D. Final exam

The final exam will be available on Moodle on August 26-27. It will be similar in format to the mid-term exam. The final exam will account for 25% of your grade.