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Principles of Microeconomics

Econ 160 B1, Fall 2016

Instructor: Ritam Chaurey


LT 1014
rchaurey@binghamton.edu
Office Hours: Wednesday 10.30-11.30 AM.
Class Meetings: TR 10:05 -11:30 am, LH 002
See the web for schedule of discussion sections.
Textbook: Principles of Microeconomics, N. Gregory Mankiw, 7th edition. You also
need to purchase MindTap (for homeworks). MindTap will give you access to a digital
copy of the textbook. You can also order a loose-leaf copy of the book with MindTap.

Course Objectives:
Economics is the study of how one person or multiple persons (society) manage their
scarce resources. Resources are scarce if we cannot give everybody as much as he or she
wants. Thus part of managing scarce resources is the question of allocation: or who
gets what? The answer to this question has two components efficiency and fairness.
Efficient allocation means wastage of resources should be minimized. Allocating
resources fairly means that everybody gets as much as she should get. This normative
component explains why there is so much controversy about economics; defining
efficiency is relatively straightforward, but it is much harder to find a definition of
fairness on which we can all agree.
The other part of managing scarce resources is the question of decision-making: who
decides who gets what? We can make decisions either jointly (through an elected
government) or individually. Economists assert that we generally get a more attractive
outcome if decisions about the allocation of resources are made individually. Thus
economists advocate markets as a useful tool of decentralized decision-making.

My goal is for you to understand:

(1) how economists think.

You dont need to agree with the economists way of thinking, but it is useful to
understand the motivation behind the recommendations that economists make and that
are in the news every day.

(2) the pros and cons of different ways of allocating scarce resources.
When do markets work well, and what should we do when they dont work well?
(3) how individual choice and scarcity affect your life.

Economics goes far beyond understanding inflation and unemployment, and you might
be surprised to learn how much economics can contribute to your own decision-making
in everyday life.

This course fulfills the Gen Ed N requirement (Social Sciences).


The learning outcomes for N courses are as follows:

Students in N courses will demonstrate


1. Knowledge of major concepts, models, and issues (and their interrelationships) of at
least one of the social sciences: anthropology, economics, geography, history, political
science, or sociology.
2. An understanding of the methods used by social scientists to explore social
phenomena, including, when appropriate to the discipline, observation, hypothesis
development, measurement and data collection, experimentation, evaluation of evidence,
and analysis by mathematics or other interpretive frameworks.

Course requirements:

I. Prerequisites: None.

II. Dates:

Your course grade will be based on 10 homework sets, two midterms, and one
comprehensive final exam. The due dates for the homework assignments are listed on the
course webpage. The midterms and the final exam will be on the following days:

Midterm 1: Thursday, Oct 6 in class (LH 002)


Midterm 2: Thursday, Nov 17 in class (LH 002)
Final Exam: TBD

Before you decide to take this course, check that your personal schedule does not conflict
with these dates.

III. Grading:
(1) I will automatically drop your two lowest homework assignments, that is, those
assignments that you either missedfor any reasonor where you scored lowest.

I will not assign grades for individual exams and homework assignments. Instead, I will
transform your total homework score into scores between 0 and 20 (so the homeworks
count for 20% of your final grade) and each midterm will count for 20% of your final
grade. Your final exam score will count for 40% of your grade. I will add these
transformed scores (thus obtaining a score between 0 and 100) and use this sum to
determine your course grade.

Exception: If you earn a score of 90% or higher in the comprehensive final exam,
then you will earn a straight A for the course, regardless of your midterm and
homework scores. While this rule benefits mostly those students who would otherwise
have earned grades of A- or B+, it often also helps students who would have otherwise
earned lower grades. So dont despair if your first midterm grade is lowchanging your
study habits can still pay off!

(2) Under no circumstances will I give you a passing grade in this class only because you
might need such a grade. Grades will be based neither on need nor on effort but solely on
evidence that you understand the material. Do not ask for extra credit assignments at
the end of the semester if your grades are not sufficient for a C. I would have to give
all students the opportunity to earn such extra credit, in which case it would be part of the
regular assignments and stop being extra credit. And obviously I cannot add regular
assignments mid-semester.

IV. Missed assignments and missed exams:


Homework assignments:
I will automatically drop your two lowest homework assignments, that is, those
assignments that you either missedfor any reasonor where you scored lowest. There
will be no makeups for missed homework assignments.

Midterms:

There will be no make-up midterm exams, except to accommodate religious


holidays. No questions asked, no need to tell me that you cant come.

(b) If you show up for a midterm and receive the question sheet, then you need to finish
the midterm and the grade counts (i.e. no substitution).

Dont skip the midterm. You might have a bad day when you take the final (for example,
because you were busy studying for your other exams), and every midterm helps you to
spread the risk of earning a bad grade in the course.

(3) Final exam:

All officially scheduled final exams will be linked from BU Brain CHECK FOR
CONFLICTS.

It is your responsibility to ask me if the request has been approved. Only students who are
approved may take a make-up final exam.

The Economics Department approves make-up exams ONLY for the following conditions:
Conflicts with the OFFICIAL final exam schedule, such as two exams at the same time or
more than two exams on the same CALENDAR day.
DOCUMENTED personal illness or family emergency.

V. Emailing me:

Some ground rules for emails:

(1) I will respond to emails only if


- the subject line indicates the course number (Econ 160) and the reason for emailing me.
- they follow proper business etiquetteno txtspk.
Note that proper business etiquette requires a salutation at the beginning and at the end of
your email.

(2) I will ignore any inquiry that can be answered by reading either the syllabus or the outline
of lecture topics on the course website.

(3) I will answer questions about the course material only if my response requires no more
than a short paragraph. Please come to my office hours for all other questions.

(4) Your best strategy to get answers to your questions is always to (1) ask questions in class,
(2) come to my office hours, or (3) ask your TA during your discussion section. Thats
precisely what discussion sections are forthink of them as extended office hours that
permit all students to avoid the long lines that would form outside my office if I was the only
person whom you could ask.

VI. Miscellaneous:

(1) Deadline for a course withdrawal (with a W) is in Oct (TBD). Deadline for course-
change-of-grade option is also Oct (TBD). Harpur College rarely approves late drops, and
I will not give you an incomplete if this happens. I will give incompletes only in cases of
genuine emergencies (e.g. documented personal illness).

(2) Let me know as soon as possible if you have a disability that requires special
accommodation for lectures or exams. If you have permission to use additional time for
in-class exams, let me know well in advance so that I can supply adequate
accommodationdo not wait until the evening before the exam.

(3) I expect you to observe the Student Academic Honesty Code, so make sure that you
are familiar with its provisions (its in the University Bulletin). I will prosecute violations
of the code, for example, cheating on exams, as specified in the code.
How to do well in this class:

(1) Understand that this class is not a memorization course! If you try to cram the night
before the exam, then you will earn a crummy grade! Even if you memorize everything
that I say in class, you will not do well in this course!
Why is that? Any facts that you might be able to memorize will be outdated in a couple
of months or years, so I consider it inappropriate to waste your valuable time with them.
Instead, this course will teach you various important tools that you can apply to future
economic scenarios that I expect to be of interest to you. I want you to be able to
understand and to apply these tools, and you cannot achieve this by sheer memorization
but only through practice.

(2) Spend enough time on this class! As a rule of thumb, you should spend 3 hours per
week for each credit that you take. This class carries 4 credits, so you ought to plan to
work on average 12 hours per week for this class. (3 hours in class, 1 hour in your
discussion section, and an additional 8 hours outside of classreading the book,
reviewing your notes, completing the homework assignments, etc.)

(3) Come to class regularly, and keep up with the readings! All topics in this course are
closely related to each other, and we will always rely on the material that we have
covered early in the semester. If you miss classes without making up the missed work,
then you will be lost later on. The material is too complex to understand it during the day
or night before an exam!

(4) Read the assigned chapter(s) from the book before class and read them again after
class; dont rely solely on your notes!

If you come to class unprepared, then you are likely to get lost and bored. In addition, if
you see the material in class for the first time, then you will spend too much time
digesting the new stuff and not enough time thinking about it. If, on the other hand, you
have spent some time with the material before we talk about it, then you are in a much
better position to identify difficult points and ask for clarification during the lecture. The
course web page has a fairly detailed tentative outline of all lectures, so preparing each
lecture ahead of time is straightforward.

(5) Put enough effort into the homework assignments!


They are not meant to torture you but rather to help you practice your economics skills
and to prepare you for the midterms and the comprehensive final exam.
and most importantly:

(6) Ask questions in class if you dont understand something!


If you have a question, then it is very likely that some of your classmates have the same
question but dont dare to ask. There are NO stupid questions. Dont be intimidated to
speak up in class. Your questions are necessary feedback for me to see if I am too fast or
too slow. If nobody asks questions, then I have to assume that everyone understands the
material, and I will move on to the next topic.

(7) Talk to me or to your TA if the material confuses you!


Dont wait until the midterms oreven worseuntil the final exam to seek for help;
come as early as possible.

Tentative Course Outline:*


*Last semester I covered Chapters 1-19 except Chapter 12. I might change the
sequence of Chapters at some point depending on how much time I take to cover
the topics in a Chapter.

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