Teaching

Principles of Microeconomics

Undergraduate, Summer 2021
Course designer and instructor

In this course, students will learn how economists approach important social issues like unemployment, inequality, and even war. From the ground up, we will learn how to break down these complex topics in manageable conceptual building blocks. This will allow us to explain what causes these issues and what different players in society can do to make a change.

The first part of the course focuses on how individuals make decisions. Then, we look at how different individuals interact among each other and what outcomes result form their interaction. By the end of the course the students should be able to:
1. Understand the difference between objectives and constraints, and how they interact in decision-making.
2. Represent a real-life situation in terms of objectives, information, and constraints.
3. Describe markets of goods and services and predict how they react to changes in the involved agents’ decision-making process (preferences, budget, technology).
4. Describe the effect of policies that affect these markets (environmental policies, trade restrictions, worker’s protection, business tax...).
5. Describe real-life situations in terms of strategic interactions (business strategy, war, public goods...).
6. Describe the features of competitive and non-competitive markets.
7. Explain in broad terms how economic theory is tested against empirical data.
8. Explain some instances in which empirical evidence contrasts with economic theory