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Learning objectives
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At the end of the course the students should be able to account for the following concepts and theories and demonstrate their application to business and public policy issues:
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The method, paradigm and concepts of economics, including what is a firm, a good, a market, efficiency, equilibrium, and gains from trade and division of labour.
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The concepts and analytical tools of supply, demand, and elasticity and how changes in underlying conditions such as cost structures, preferences and public policy affect prices, quantities, and the distribution of benefits and costs.
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The notions of market failures relating to externalities, public goods, resource depletion, and climate change, and the scope for overcoming them with public policy.
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The underlying conditions for alternative industry structures (monopoly, competition, etc.), their implication for welfare and efficiency, and the scope for public policy to regulate them.
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The forces determining the demand and supply of labour using basic analytical tools.
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The notion of risk, choice under uncertainty, and value of information, and how it relates to the workings of financial asset markets and affects economic interaction and coordination at a basic level.
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The concepts, tools, and insights from organisational economics, including transaction cost economics, principal-agent theory, game theory and strategic behavior at a basic level.
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The notions and insights from the economics of strategy at a basic level.
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Examination
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Microeconomics
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Microeconomics:
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Type of test
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Written Exam
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Marking scale
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7-step scale
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Second examiner
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External examiner
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Exam period
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December/January
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Aids
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Open Book, Written and Electronic Aid is permitted
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Duration
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4 Hours
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Four-hour open-book written examination. The students’ performance will be assessed according to the 7-point grading scale by the teacher and an external censor.
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Examination
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As an introduction to the basics of economics, the course provides the prerequisite for all the subsequent economics courses of the BLC programme. The course is simultaneously offered to ASP students as the mandatory introduction to economics.
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Course content
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Microeconomics provides an introduction to the methodology, perspective, analytical style, and main theoretical insights of economics as it applies to individual to organisations, industries, and markets. By way of introduction, the course starts with an investigation of what a firm is, and how firms evolve over time, and basic accounting notions of costs, revenue, profits, assets and liabilities. Then it moves to the methodology, concepts and theories from classical economics, such as efficiency, division of labor and gains from trade, consumer choice and demand, cost structure and supply, market equilibrium and elasticity of supply and demand, market structure and competition, welfare, labour markets, externalities and public policy (particularly issues related to climate change), and the economics of risk and information, The last part of the course introduces modern microeconomics such as transaction cost economics, agency theory, behavior theories of the firm, game theory. It concludes with a basic introduction to the concepts and insights from the economics of strategy which will serve both as a concluding element for the microeconomics course and as a preview of later courses in business administration and strategy.
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Teaching methods
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Lectures and tutorial exercises. Lectures focus on presenting theory and insights. Tutorials focus on applying these to concrete exercises.
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Expected literature
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- [MT]: Mankiw, NG; Taylor, MP (2008) Economics (5th European ed.), South-Western,
ISBN 978‑1‑84880‑133‑6. (Also used in the Macroeconomics course)
- [DS]: Douma, S; Schreuder, H (2008) Economic Approaches to Organizations (4th ed.), Prentice-Hall,
ISBN 978‑0‑273‑68197‑4. (Also used in the Managerial Economics course, 3rd semester, ASP programme)
- Companion on-line material for the Mankiw textbook.
Additional notes uploaded by the teachers.
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