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Eco 61
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Intermediate Microeconomics Professor Tavis Barr |
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| Syllabus |
TOPIC ONE: CLASSICAL AND MODERN UTILITARIANISM
- Classical Utilitarianism
- Pareto Optimality, Preference, and Ordinal Utility
- Game Theory as a Theory of Distribution
- Cooperative and Non-Cooperative Games; Nash solutions
Reading: Online Textbook,
Chapter 1
TOPIC TWO: MODERN THEORIES OF SOCIAL WELFARE
- Rawls and his Respondents
- Voting and Social Choice
- Social Welfare Functions
- The Arrow Impossibility Theorem
Reading: Online Textbook,
Chapter 2
TOPIC THREE: CONSUMER CHOICE
- Preferences and Demand
- Ordinal Utility and Indifference Curves
- The Consumer's Budget and Choice Problem
- Working Backward: Revealed Preference
Reading: Online Textbook,
Chapter 3
TOPIC FOUR: CONSUMER DEMAND
- The Price-Consumption
Curve and Individual Demand
- The Income-Consumption
Curve and the Engle Curve
- The Income and Substitution Effects; Giffen Goods
- From Individual to Market Demand
- The First Welfare Theorem
- Shortcomings of Utility Theory
Reading: Online Textbook,
Chapter 4
TOPIC FIVE: THE FIRM AND
PRODUCTION
- Production Functions
- Isoquants, Isocost
- Marginal and Average Product
- Input Choice and the Equal Marginal Principle
- Output-Expansion Path
- Cost Functions; Marginal
and Average Cost; Cost-Output Elasticity
Reading: Online
Textbook, Chapter 5
TOPIC SIX: THE THEORY OF THE FIRM
- Knight
- Coase
- Williamson
- Alchian and Demsetz
- Lazear
- Newman and Legros
- Hart
Reading: Online
Textbook, Chapter 6
TOPIC SEVEN: FIRM AND
SOCIAL OPTIMA
- Assumptions of the
Cost-Benefit Framework
- Firm Demand and Revenue; Demand Elasticity
- How Firms Choose Output
- Efficiency in Production
TOPIC EIGHT: TYPES OF COMPETITION
- The Context of
Market-Based Distribution
- Monopoly
- Monopolistic Competition
and Perfect Competition
- Oligopoly
TOPIC NINE: ANALYSIS OF MARKET OUTCOMES
- Consumer Surplus
- Perfect Competition and the Supply Curve
- Taxes and Price Controls under Imperfect Competition