1 Overview of Faculty Resources
3 Why It Matters: Economic Thinking
5 Video: Scarcity and Choice
7 Video: Resources
15 Reading: Solving Simple Equations
16 Outcome: Graphs in Economics
19 Reading: Interpreting Slope
20 Reading: Types of Graphs
23 Putting It Together: Economic Thinking
24 Glossary: Economic Thinking
26 Outcome: The Cost of Choices
28 Reading: Calculating Opportunity Cost
31 Reading: The Production Possibilities Frontier
34 Reading: Rationality and Self-Interest
37 Reading: Marginal Analysis
38 Outcome: Positive and Normative Statements
43 Putting It Together: Choice in a World of Scarcity
45 Why It Matters: Supply and Demand
46 Outcome: Economic Systems
47 Reading: Economic Systems
57 Reading: What Is Supply?
59 Worked Example: Shift in Supply
60 Reading: Summary of Factors That Change Supply
63 Outcome: Equilibrium
66 Reading: Changes in Equilibrium
67 Worked Example: Supply and Demand
73 Putting It Together: Supply and Demand
77 Reading: Introduction to Elasticity
80 Outcome: Calculating Price Elasticity
82 Reading: Calculating Price Elasticities
84 Reading: Polar Cases of Elasticity
85 Outcome: Other Elasticities
89 Outcome: Price Elasticity and Total Revenue
90 Reading: Elasticity and Total Revenue
91 Reading: Elasticity, Costs, and Customers
93 Glossary: Elasticity
94 Putting It Together: Elasticity
95 Why It Matters: Government Action
96 Outcome: Price Ceilings
97 Reading: Price Ceilings
99 Reading: Price Floors
100 Case in Point: Organic Foods
102 Outcome: Tax Incidence
103 Reading: Tax Incidence
105 Reading: Financing Government
106 Reading: Types of Taxes
107 Worked Example: Price Controls
111 Why It Matters: Surplus
114 Outcome: Surplus and Inefficiency
117 Glossary: Surplus
118 Why It Matters: Utility
119 Outcome: Defining Utility
120 Reading: Consumer Choices
121 Reading: Consumption Choices
122 Reading: Choosing with Marginal Utility
125 Reading: Marginal Utility
126 Outcome: The Utility Maximizing Rule
127 Reading: A Tool for Maximizing Utility
131 Outcome: How Utility Changes
132 Reading: The Foundations of Demand Curve
133 Reading: Income Changes and Consumption Choices
134 Outcome: Behavioral Economics
135 Reading: Behavioral Economics: An Alternative Viewpoint
138 Why It Matters: Production
139 Outcome: Defining Production
140 Reading: Cost and Industry Structure
141 Reading: Factors of Production
142 Outcome: Marginal, Average, and Total Product
143 Reading: Production Choices and Costs
144 Outcome: Explicit and Implicit Costs
145 Reading: Explicit and Implicit Costs
147 Reading: Fixed and Variable Costs
148 Reading: The Structure of Costs in the Short Run
149 Outcome: Sunk Costs
157 Putting It Together: Production
158 Glossary: Production
160 Outcome: Defining Perfect Competition
162 Outcome: Perfectly Competitive Firms and Industries
163 Reading: Perfect Competition: A Model
165 Outcome: Costs and Revenue in a Perfectly Competitive Market
166 Reading: How Perfectly Competitive Firms Make Output Decisions
172 Outcome: Entry and Exit Decisions
176 Putting It Together: Perfect Competition
177 Glossary: Perfect Competition
179 Outcome: Introduction to Monopolies
181 Outcome: Barriers to Entry
183 Outcome: Revenue, Costs, Profit and Losses in Monopolies
184 Reading: Choosing Output and Price
186 Outcome: Inefficiencies in Monopolies
187 Reading: The Inefficiency of Monopoly
188 Reading: Monopolies and Deadweight Loss
189 Reading: Price Discrimination
191 Reading: Monopoly and Antitrust Policy
194 Reading: Regulating Natural Monopolies
196 Putting It Together: Monopoly
197 Glossary: Monopoly
198 Why It Matters: Monopolistically Competitive Industries
199 Outcome: Monopolistically Competitive Industries
200 Reading: Introducing Monopolistic Competition
202 Outcome: Calculating Cost and Revenue
205 Reading: Monopolistic Competitors and Entry
208 Outcome: Inefficiency of Monopolistic Competition
209 Reading: Monopolistic Competition and Efficiency
210 Putting It Together: Monopolistically Competitive Industries
213 Outcome: Introduction to Oligopolies
214 Reading: Introducing Oligopolies
217 Reading: Oligopoly Models
219 Reading: Collusion or Competition?
222 Reading: Prisoner’s Dilemma
223 Reading: Game Theory
225 Reading: Tradeoffs of Imperfect Competition
227 Glossary: Oligopolies
229 Outcome: Defining Public Goods
234 Outcome: Positive and Negative Externalities
236 Reading: Introduction to Externalities and Pollution
240 Outcome: Government Involvement and Externalities
242 Reading: The Benefits and Costs of U.S. Environmental Laws
246 Reading: Market-Oriented Environmental Tools: Effectiveness and Application
251 Reading: Introduction to International Trade
253 Reading: Absolute Advantage
261 Case in Point: Outsourcing, Insourcing, and Employment
262 Reading: The Tradeoffs of Trade Policy
263 Outcome: Trade Policy and Agreements
264 Reading: How Trade Policy Is Enacted
269 Reading: The Foreign Exchange Market
270 Reading: Strengthening and Weakening Currency
273 Reading: Macroeconomic Effects of Exchange Rates
274 Reading: Exchange-Rate Policies
276 Reading: Introduction to Globalization
280 Putting It Together: Globalization, Trade and Finance
281 Glossary: International Trade
282 Why It Matters: Income Distribution
283 Outcome: Factors of Production
284 Reading: The Demand for Labor
286 Reading: The Supply of Labor
287 Case in Point: An Airline Pilot’s Lament
288 Reading: Labor Markets at Work
289 Case in Point: Technology and the Wage Gap
290 Reading: Time and Interest Rates
293 Reading: Natural Resources and Conservation
294 Outcome: Competition and Wages
296 Reading: Monopoly and Monopsony: A Comparison
298 Reading: Price Setters on the Supply Side
301 Outcome: Measuring and Understanding the Distribution of Income
302 Reading: Poverty and Economic Inequality
304 Reading: The Safety Net
305 Reading: Explaining Inequality
308 Glossary: Income Distribution
309 Putting It Together: Income Distribution
310 Welcome
311 Textbook: Important
315 Khan Academy and External Links
317 Grade Determination
320 Cheat Sheet
322 Cost Functions
325 Keep These Things In Mind
326 The Shut Down Decision
329 Some things to keep in mind
331 Cheat Sheet: How Many Workers Should Be Hired?
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134 Outcome: Behavioral Economics
134 Outcome: Behavioral Economics
What you’ll learn to do: describe the behavioral economics approach to understanding decision making
If a friendly stranger handed you $20, how would you feel? What if you lost $20 the next week? Do you think that you’d feel sad about it, or would just be happy that you broke even? In this outcome, you’ll see that most people would still be sad about the $20 loss. Economic decisions are not always logical. Read on to find out why!
LEARNING ACTIVITIES
The learning activities for this section include:
- Reading: Behavioral Economics: An Alternative Viewpoint
- Video: Behavioral Economics
- Self Check: Behavioral Economics
Take time to review and reflect on each of these activities in order to improve your performance on the assessment for this section.