This is the first course in microeconomics. This course is designed to give you an understanding of basic economic concepts and to introduce the “economic way of thinking.” While we will stress mastering the basics of supply and demand, you should keep in mind that the real objective of any model or theory is to better understand the world around us and, to that end, we will try to apply the techniques whenever practical. By the end of this course you should be able to:

• Understand some of the basic economic problems facing society.
• Understand how economists characterize and model individual and firm behaviors.
• Understand how economists use the supply and demand model to interpret and understand an array of social phenomena.
• Understand how economists characterize the nature and relevance of the costs facing individuals, firms, and governments.
• Understand the characteristics, pricing policies, and profit maximizing conditions relevant to various industry structures (e.g., “competitive”, “monopolistic”).
• Understand how economists typically characterize “market failure” and what role the government might play in an ideal world.
• Understand how economists characterize “government failure”, or how (and why) governments do not always live up to the ideals.
• Apply simple microeconomic theory to some practical problems.
• Communicate microeconomic concepts to others in written and oral forms.

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This is the second course in microeconomic theory. It covers most of the well-known topics in microeconomics, such as market equilibrium, demand-side factors, supply-side factors, market structure, market failure, and various policy issues, but it does so with more sophisticated tools than you saw in your first micro class. A large part of the theoretical emphasis is on “maximization” techniques, a mainstay of the modern economic method. It is simply impossible to understand modern economics without this technique. While we will stress the mastering of theory, it should be kept in mind that the real objective of theory is to better understand the world around us and, to that end, we will try to apply the techniques whenever practical.

At the successful completion of this subject, students should:

• Be able to apply core microeconomic concepts to problems facing individuals (consumers, managers and policy makers).
• Understand how economists characterize and model individual and firm behaviors
• Understand how economists use maximization models to interpret an array of social phenomena
• Understand how economists characterize the nature and relevance of the costs facing individuals, firms, and governments.
• Understand the characteristics, pricing policies, and profit maximizing conditions relevant to various industry structures (i.e., “competitive”, “monopolistic”, etc.)
• Communicate microeconomic analysis to others in written and oral forms

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This course investigates the various aspects of the Austrian school of economics. While we cannot cover all aspects of Austrian economics, the main goal is to introduce you to the key insights of the Austrian school. In addition to providing an introduction to the various ideas that constitute “market process economics,” a second aim is to provide some historical and philosophical context. I would also like to provide some basics for making scholarly contributions to the broader economics discipline using Austrian insights.

Learning Outcomes: Upon completion of this course, you will

1. Understand the foundations of market process economics.
2. Understand a number of key areas where market process approaches diverge from the neoclassical mainstream.
3. Be able to build on these ideas to generate a market process approach to your own research problems.
4. Improve your written and oral communication skills.

Required Materials: The reading for this course comes from excerpts from books and journal articles. The list of readings is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all of the relevant readings for any given topic, but rather is intended to provide some of the core readings in each area on the syllabus.

You need to do all of the required readings and come to class prepared to discuss them. More so than other areas of economics, market process economics traverse economic, sociological, philosophical and political dimensions. This makes market process economics very exciting on the one hand, but demands that issues be covered in a more nuanced fashion, in some instances, on the other.

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Economics has had a profound effect on legal analysis, legal scholarship and public policy over the last few decades. As a result of this influence, many long-held views on legal principles and the effects of laws and legal decisions have been reexamined. This course is designed to give students an introduction to the issues and analysis of law and the legal system using the tools and approaches of economics. Largely based upon microeconomics, our subject matter is often referred to as the “rational choice” approach to law, although we will move beyond that strict definition.

We will examine fundamental aspects of the law, such as the importance of cooperation and coordination among individuals in a society, the role of formal and informal rules, property rights, contracts, the efficiency of legal institutions, and constitutional versus non-constitutional decision making. We will also examine “economic” views of criminal behavior and the punishment thereof. We will attempt to bring economic theory together with real-world applications whenever possible.

At the successful completion of this subject, students should:

• Appreciate the importance and roll of rules in any society
• Be well acquainted with core concepts of law and economics
• Be able to apply law and economic principles to problems facing individuals and policy makers
• Be able to communicate these concepts to others in written and oral forms.

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The sub-field of economics known as Public Finance and/or Public Policy is one of the most useful areas to study in economics. Public finance issues are discussed in newspapers, policy debates, and around the kitchen table (dorm room?) every day; they strongly affect our daily lives and our standard of living. This course is designed to give students an introduction to the field, which attempts to understand the role of government in the economy. As such, the course is filled with valuable facts and analyses of programs that routinely affect us, like education, pollution control, health insurance, income redistribution, taxation (individual and corporate), federalism, and the public budgeting process. Most of public finance takes the government’s decision-making process for granted (i.e., how or why the government actually made its decisions) and focuses on the results of those decisions; in other words, it tends to focus on using economic tools to evaluate an “ideal” list of government activities and to evaluate how actual policies differ from the ideal. If you think of the government like any business or organization, you will recognize that it has revenues and expenditures. On the expenditure side of public finance, we study issues surrounding the activities (“expenditure”) of government: should the government be involved in particular areas or markets? How much should it be involved? In what fashion should it be involved? On the revenue side of public finance we study the issues surrounding the raising of revenue to fund its activities; generally, this means focusing on taxation and its effects.

There are two important developments in public finance over recent decades that are reflected in the textbook. One is the increasing importance of studying transfer programs and social insurance; this emphasis reflects an equally growing importance of these programs as a percentage of overall government spending and policymaking. The other development is the increasing availability of good empirical work to test our theoretical models. Like the book, we will focus on three areas:

• Externalities and Public Goods: In addition to introducing the theories, we will focus specifically on the two major public policy issues involving externalities: environmental externalities, such as acid rain and global warming, and health externalities. The public goods section will include discussions on education, as well as fiscal federalism, cost/benefit analysis, and political economy/public choice issues.
• Social Insurance and Redistribution: There is an extensive discussion of the largest and fastest growing function of government, social insurance and redistribution. There are separate chapters for: redistribution and welfare policy; social security; unemployment insurance; and both public and private health insurance issues.
• Taxation in Theory and Practice: We will cover the traditional theory of taxation and, to the extent possible, the key sources of current policy debate, including taxation on labor, capital gains taxation, estate taxation, and the use of the tax code as a tool of social policy.

The models of public finance that we discuss should enable you to become a more discriminating observer, not only of the policy environment, but also of the many problems that each of us encounters in social settings on a daily basis. At the successful completion of this subject, you should:

• be well acquainted with core concepts of public finance, how they affect your life everyday, and how economists study public policy decisions.
• be able to communicate these concepts to others in written and oral forms.

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The object of the honors thesis is to further the professional and academic development of the candidate. This course (taken for credit once during the junior year and once during the first semester of your senior year) is designed to improve students ability to identify specific research problems, provide potential solutions, and communicate this progress in written and oral forms. One overriding rationale for this class is to force students to read and evaluate others’ research work. Doing this necessarily compels students to “communicate” with others about their writing, which is all-too-often non-existent without this compulsion. It forces each student to think about others’ problems, shortcomings and effectiveness of communication in a way that encourages students to think about their own work and progress differently. Increased self-reflection in this manner is therefore a key goal of this class and one that can only improve one’s own writing and research.

There are a number of ways to conduct a writing course, including, among others, focusing on grammar and sentence construction, or on the creative aspect. This class will spend less time thinking about how to write good sentences and paragraphs, or how to dazzle readers with your imaginative wit and flair, since I will assume you have had (or will have) plenty of opportunities in the Honors Program to get training and feedback on these aspects of the writing process. We will instead concentrate on writing in the context of the research process. As a result, we will be reading, discussing, and doing exercises with the aim of better understanding the mechanics of the research writing process.

The research/thesis process is often a mystery to the uninitiated, so we’ll try to demystify it. My aim is that each student know exactly how to go about starting and finishing any research project that might be assigned to him or her, either in an academic setting or a professional one. There really are (often overlooked) devices and insights that can help structure the research process and your writing; these devices can make all the difference in a project, not just for quality’s sake, but even in completing the project at all. Anyone who has done much research has seen plenty of very smart people who couldn’t get out of first gear with their own research because they hadn’t internalized some of these simple skills. Some of these skills include:

• Formulating a “researchable” topic or question
• Writing up a proposal on a planned topic, and
• Learning to separate brainstorming from organizing ideas from writing first drafts to completing final drafts
• Organizing your work in the form of an outline
• Gaining experience in reading and critiquing others’ writing, and similarly
• Learning how to receive feedback and criticism on your writing from others.

• Help you overcome the difficulties experienced in your thesis research by encouraging you to communicate with other economics/social science students;
• Offer you an array of feedback on your projects beyond that which your direct supervisor can provide;
• Improve your written and oral presentation skills in the most timely and effective manner;
• Vastly improve the thesis outcome.

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