Description

Description

Why do some restaurants and nightclubs always have a line, and what can you learn from them for your business?  What will be the effect of new technologies, for example 3-D printing, on your industry?  How should you respond to changes in demand for your product?  What about to a new competitor?  How can you convey that your product is better than competitors’ when consumers aren’t sophisticated enough to tell them apart?  Why aren’t there sufficient efforts to switch to renewable energy sources, and can your business help address such a gap?
This course is an introduction to microeconomics, a simple but powerful toolkit for analyzing the business world around you.  We begin by introducing the simplest model of markets, the supply/demand model.  We then introduce models of consumption and production.  We conclude with an overview of the three classic cases in which competitive models are insufficient: monopoly, incomplete information, and externalities. Throughout, we use relevant, often current, examples to develop your ability to apply the theory as a manager.

objectives

The basic objective of this course is to familiarize you with the approach, language, and techniques that economists use to understand the world around them.  My goal is provide you with the tools to more insightfully analyze the market forces that impact you and your businesses, and to better understand economic commentary from others.  Or at least to keep you from falling asleep.

Materials

There is no required textbook for the class and most people won’t find one all that useful.  Some people do find it helpful to have a text to reference.  For those folks, I suggest Perloff’s Microeconomics, which is available to download for Kindle here: http://www.amazon.com/Microeconomics-Edition-Pearson-Economics-ebook/dp/B008UFWBN6/ref=tmm_kin_title_0  I have referred to the relevant chapters in this textbook in the course outline below.