Principles of
Microeconomics
Taught by:
Jaime Erikson
Jaime Erikson at
Course Information
|
Course Number |
ECN 212 |
|
Section Number |
3978 |
|
Semester |
Wintersession 2007 -2008 |
|
Course Dates |
12/17/2007-01/11/2008 |
Official Course Description
Microeconomic analysis including the theory of consumer choice, price determination, resource allocation and income distribution. Includes non-competitive market structures such as monopoly and oligopoly; and the effects of government regulation. Selected issues examined.
Course Objectives
To become familiar with the theory of the firm, including, shutdown and maximum profit price and output.
To recognize the different market structures.
To understand the theory of exchange and production.
To identify the determinants of a successful business.
To identify gains to consumers and producers under different institutions and regulations.
Welcome!
Welcome to the wonderful world of economics.
If you don’t believe me, check out Armchair Economist by Steven Landsburg and Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan.
Attached are the instructions on how to access the website for this course. You may purchase a used or new (current or previous edition) of the Mankiw text for this course, but all course materials can be printed out from the website and are included with the $60.00 course fee.
If you are having trouble with the course, or expect to miss an assignment for personal reasons or otherwise, please contact me BEFORE the event. I am happy to work with my students. However, it is almost impossible to make special exceptions after the fact. Please, be honest with yourself in your academic ability. I require my students to have a minimum algebraic proficiency. You will know your abilities in this area upon completing the first couple chapters of the course and the “pretest”. There, you will see questions on basic graphing and algebraic techniques required for the successful understanding of economics. Should you need assistance in this or any chapter, please make an appointment with a personal tutor (or choose the online option available at the same location) at http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/library/LE/index.html
Please take care of your own academic integrity. I will not be responsible for “automatically” withdrawing you at the end of the semester if you happen to be failing It may be surprising to you that I am telling you how to drop the course even before it is begun, but too many students do not take the initiative to find out for themselves.
1. It is rumored that you can withdraw online. I know nothing of this, but if you do, kudos to you
2. The traditional method, once unrestricted withdrawal has passed, requires the following actions:
a. The student picks up a copy of the withdrawal form from the registrars office
b. The student fills out the form, signs it and drops it off at the economics department in the care of Marisol Chavez
c. The student sends me an email notifying me of the completion and delivery of the form
d. I sign the form and send it to the registrar, where it is left for processing
In the case that you wish to withdraw from this course, you must retrieve and fill out the proper withdrawal form from the registrar’s office, and submit it to the economics department for review and submission. If your withdrawal is approved, our department will finalize the processing with the registrar’s office. When my signature is required for withdrawal, I will NOT process a student with a “W” unless you have been keeping up in the class. If it is the case, that a student has been doing the work, but is not doing well, then I am happy to consider a “W”. If, however, the student could have withdrawn weeks or months before the unrestricted withdrawal deadline, and then choose to make extra paperwork for the Social Sciences staff, that student will be processed with a “Y”. So please pay attention to your records.
Please refer to the MCC website http://www.maricopa.edu/gvpolicy/adminregs/students/print/Academic%202006-2007.pdf for the restricted and unrestricted withdrawal dates.
Enough of the not-so-fun stuff. Let us get started:
Textbook
The ISBN for our textbook is
0-324-36020-7 includes
access code and text book
0-324-42097-8
(access code only)
The latter can be purchased online at www.aplia.com. Both can be purchased at the bookstore.
Although textbooks (and their prices) are not normally a happy topic of conversation, I am pleased to inform you that you do not need to purchase a textbook. An online version of your text comes standard with the course fee. Yipeeeee! That being said, I might recommend that you purchase a used version of a previous edition (usually about 2-3 dollars off Amazon or similar), and consider getting a study guide (either from Mankiw or another author for perspective). This practice will help you prepare for your weekly projects. Some examples are:
http://college.hmco.com/economics/boyes/economics/6e/micro/students/index.html
Contact Information
Because this is an online course, I do not have office hours, per se. However, I am available continuously through the methods below.
|
Main campus webpage |
|
|
My webpage |
|
|
My email address. In an emergency, (i.e. if your email bounces back), you can call the department secretary for additional emails for me. |
|
|
indigogodiva |
My AIM/ICQ tag |
|
480-461-7017 |
Office phone number: you are better to reach me via email since I share this phone with many other faculty |
Free Tutoring and Distance Learning Orientation
If you are new to online courses, please have a look at http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/distance/
If on the other hand, you are comfortable with online courses, but may need some in person or online tutoring with mathematics or economics, the Learning center at the library will be more than happy to help you at http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/library/LE/. You can see they also offer online tutoring http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/library/LE/online_tutor/index.html.
Timing
Please check your Aplia course page for detailed scheduling of assignments. We cover approximately 20 chapters throughout the course. In addition to the graded assignments, there are many more practice assignments that are produced for your own benefit. Scheduling of all assignments is listed on the Aplia website.
Assignments and Extra Credit
The Aplia course website is an all inclusive (well almost) center for our course. Please gain access (there is a grace period for payment) immediately, so that you can get familiar with the setup of the course, and ask me any questions.
http://www.public.asu.edu/~econphd/MCC/3978access.htm
When you log in to the website, you will see that there are 20 something required assignments throughout the next several months. Dispersed in there are several practice assignments. With most of the required assignments, you will find practice assignments that directly correlate. For your own benefit, you may want to do the practice assignment first. You will notice that there are two assignments that are marked pre-test and post-test. If you do well on the pre-test and do not feel it necessary to do the following work-ups and the post-test, then feel free to skip those. I will not count both the pre-test and the post-test for your grade. I will automatically choose the higher of the two.
Though experiments that you will see dispersed throughout the assignments are not graded, their corresponding assignments (the preparation and follow-up analysis) are extra credit and can only be redeemed for extra credit points if you attend the experiment. Therefore, if you miss an assignment, or project, or do really badly on one of them, I will refer you to the experiments for extra credit. There are many points that you can earn from these experiments, about 10 percent of your total grade in the class. That means, if you join the experiments and do the corresponding assignments, you will bump your grade approximately one letter grade.
This course is quite non-traditional in many senses. Because it is an online course, and I recognize that you are always free to use your book and your notes, there will not be a traditional exam schedule or final. Your final grade will be determined by the aforementioned assignments and a final project.
Final Project
Your Final Project will be turned in at the end of the semester in several parts. It will be a business plan for an IMAGINARY business. I specify imaginary, because in the past, I have had students use business plans for a business that they already run, or have taken from someone else. The idea is to come up with a functional business that will run based on the information you learned in this course. There is no FINAL EXAM per se.
Grading
|
Aplia assignments |
650 points |
|
Final Project Part I |
50 points |
|
Final Project Part II |
100 points |
|
Final Project Part III |
200 points |
|
Total Points in Course |
1000 points |
Additional Project not for Extra Credit
I add here a project that has often been requested by my students over the years. I WILL NOT count this for extra credit, and you are free to work on this, or not. I have set up an investment competition for people in this class. Throughout this project, you will learn to decipher the finance pages of WSJ and the NY Times, and various websites. You will also learn what investors look for in a ‘good pick’. At the very least, you will be able to nod intelligently at the reports on CNN and CNBC.
To start,
You have now joined our game, and should see me in there. Notice that we start with 100 thousand dollars trading money (Don’t think of it like play money)
Additionally, I will be forwarding you a copy of the Motley Fool investors’ newsletter so that we all can make better investment decisions. Even if you are not sure that you want to invest, you may want to track a few companies so that you can see whether your intuition is good economic intuition.
Welcome to our Class!
Disclaimers:
· Students are entirely responsible for performing subject to the information in the syllabus.
· Students are entirely responsible for knowledge of college policies included in the college catalog and the student handbook
* Students with disabilities are
asked register with the appropriate office at the college if they require
special accommodations
** Information in the syllabus may be
subject to change with reasonable advance notice as deemed appropriate by the
instructor.