WEEK 1	TUE	SEPT 9	Buy the textbook and read the first 2 chapters in preparation for WEEK 1
	THU		Download the course outline from the link above and consider proposed changes to the policies therein
WEEK2	TUE	SEPT 16	Read Chapters 2 and 3 and make sure you go through the mathematical note (on page 25 of Ch. 1) in preparation for next class
	THU
WEEK3	TUE	SEPT 23	A video contest: The Fraser Institute is hosting a new Student Video Contest and students are eligible to win $10,000 in cash and electronics prizes. The topic is: Incentives Matter - Fixing Health Care in Canada. Students must submit a short concept paper by September 30th and then post their video on YouTube by October 31st. Friends and classmates can vote for the best video, and there are lots of prizes to be won. Canadian and foreign students are welcome to enter – the economic analysis is the same for everybody! Full contest details can be found at: http://www.fraserinstitute.org/studentsandlearning/forstudents/Video_Contest.htm Read Chapters 3 and 4. Read the instructions below and download the excel file and pdf instructions below, complete the PPF exercise, print it, and bring it to class on TUE WEEK 4, as explained in the EXCEL FILES section below.
	THU		When I ask you to write down your “names” in class, I obviously mean your full names and surnames. Otherwise your work will be deemed “anonymous” and will not be graded. This is a practice test (SEPT24) for you to do online in preparation for QUIZ1
WEEK4	TUE	SEPT 30	Remember to bring EXCEL assignment on the PPF
	THU		QUIZ1 Bring dark pencils (and erasers) and make sure you will know your Student ID number. There will be some multiple choice questions and some analytical and short answer questions. Quote of the week: The logic of comparative advantage highlighted something that most men—except economists—have found it hard to get their heads around: there is no reason to believe that men were breadwinners because they were any good at it. They might simply have been breadwinners because getting them to help around the house would have been even worse. Tim Harford in The Logic of Life QUIZ SOLUTIONS are posted in the QUIZ 1 section above QUIZ MARKS ARE POSTED ABOVE
WEEK5	TUE	OCT 7	Remember to bring EXCEL exercise on Demand
	THU		Remember to bring EXCEL exercise on Supply We will be skipping Chapters 7 and 8 but keep on reading Chapters 5 and 6 and then go on with Chapters 9 and 10. Remember that you may want to take advantage of the MYECONLAB tools (self-grading quizzes, practice exercises, graphing tools, etc) you can access with the code included in your book You can polish your curve-inverting skills and also your calculation of equilibrium price and quantities with this file we used today in class
WEEK6	TUE	OCT 14	Remember to bring EXCEL exercise on Market Equilibrium
	THU		Remember to bring EXCEL exercise on CS and PS…. Notice that the one on Elasticity is due on WEEK 7 instead now
WEEK7	TUE	OCT 21	Remember to bring EXCEL exercise on Elasticity This is a practice test (OCT21) to help you prepare for the MIDTERM
	THU		MIDTERM
WEEK8	TUE	OCT 28	See posted midterm solutions, make sure you start reading the chapters on production and costs Midterm grades are now in BANNER. They include the multiple choice (75), the written part (25) and a touch up (max of 6) from yesterday’s exercise. Those of you who got over 99 will not see it for now, but the extra points will add to your average in the end. I am quite disappointed with these marks and I suspect that some of you will be too. Remember however, that there is still time to bring them back up, since the points from homework and quizzes are not included in the posted mark, but will be added to the final average calculation in December. These components tend to be more favorable to most of you than what you now see in BANNER.
	THU		See New Excel file on taxes, due next week
WEEK9	TUE	NOV4	Bring excel file on taxes
	THU		Bring excel exercise on cost functions See solutions for excel on cost functions
WEEK10	TUE	NOV11	NO CLASSES: do some reading!
	THU		Bring excel file on costs This practice quiz (NOV13th) will help you prepare for QUIZ2 on Tuesday
WEEK11	TUE	NOV18th	QUIZ2 Bring dark pencils (and erasers) and make sure you will know your Student ID number. There will be some multiple choice questions and some analytical and short answer questions. NOTE from TSG: There have been a number of students marking of the left hand edge of the card. This can interfere with their marks. Please instruct students to mark only on designated areas of the card.
	THU
WEEK12	TUE	NOV 25^th	See Quiz2 marks and solutions NOTE from TSG: There have been a number of students marking of the left hand edge of the card. This can interfere with their marks. Please instruct students to mark only on esignated areas of the card. Bring excel on profit maximization under perfect competition
	THU		Do not miss the talk by the Deputy Governor of The Bank of Canada at 2:15 This is a big multiple choice practice test. There is no need to do it all at one ;)
WEEK13	TUE	DEC 2^nd	Bring excel on profit maximization for monopolists QUIZ3 Bring dark pencils (and erasers) NOTE from TSG: There have been a number of students marking of the left hand edge of the card. This can interfere with their marks. Please instruct students to mark only on designated areas of the card.
			Check timetable for final exam

LECTURE SLIDES (only updated links will appear in regular font as we go along)

MICRO

	Intro session
	1 Economics and Economic Reasoning
	Appendix: The Language of Graphs
	2. The Economic Organization Of Society
	3. The Economic problem
	4. Growth and Trade
	5. Demand
	6. Supply and Equilibrium
	Alternative notes on Supply and Demand
	7. Elasticity I
	8. Elasticity II
	Alternative notes on Elasticities
	9. Markets in Action (housing markets and labour markets)
	10.Markets in action II (taxes)
	10’. Markets in action III: recap on efficiency in markets
	Alternative notes on markets in action: taxation
	11. Organizing Production (I) Output and Costs
	11’ Organizing Production (II) Production and Costs Alternative notes on Production and Costs
	12. Perfect Competition
	12. Perfect Competition (II)
	13. Monopoly
	14. Monopolistic Competition

Homework

EXCEL files (Ignore this section until we go through this in class)

Submission of this files will make up 5% of the course mark (one third of the 15% coursework component)

If you do need to use the computers at STFX you can still use MACROS with excel. Just go to TOOLS, SECURITY, then MACRO SECURITY (towards the bottom) and set it to LOW. Then restart your Microsoft excel and you will have the macros running!!! So just ignore all the instructions I gave to people who do not own a computer! and follow the general instructions with macros.

Problems in Microeconomics is a set of practice problems and interactive lecture displays for students and faculty in introductory courses in microeconomics. The problems were written by Byron W. Brown, Professor of Economics at Michigan State University.

If you need it, you can read the instructions for these on:
http://www.bus.msu.edu/econ/brown/pim/

I suggest that you use the method of trial and error a couple of times before you ever use the GOAL SEEKING tool to find your answers. This will help you get a better understanding of the economics behind the answers!.

It is easier and safer to use EXCEL to download the files and reopen them from EXCEL. Directly double-clicking from NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR is fine, but directly double-clicking from MICROSOFT EXPLORER is normally problematic and sometimes downright catastrophic!!!

Now everyone can use macros. After lowering macro security levels and restarting Microsoft Excel, click the option "enable macros" when asked. It is better to read the PDF instruction files (you might want to print them, take notes on them and use them for further study). Most of the trouble people find with these exercises comes from not reading the instructions on the PDF file. Since it is not very difficult to work out the problems, many students stop the practice of reading the instructions before starting the work. You will save time and learn more if you keep on using the instructions, though. Many of you will find it convenient to jot their answers in the margin of the printed version of the questions, then enter the answers on the Answer Sheet all at once.

With macros, just click on SET THE BASELINE to get the original values defining the graphs. Often the questions require you to start fro m the baseline values: check that!

For verbal, as opposed to numerical answers, use the Answer Bin, and copy and paste the correct option. This is because the computer will only accept very specific wording, for example, if the answer to a question is YES, answering "oh, I really think so" will not work. :)

When submitting a test for grading, when opening the file (with macros enabled) select the option TAKE A TEST, you then have to logon with your full name and use as "student number" the last 4 digits of your STFX student ID. Then fill in the answers in the answer sheet (use the "answer bin" to get verbal answers!) and when they show all CORRECT, use the option SAVE ANSWER FILE to name and save the answers file in your compute (H drive). You can now print the answers file (which contains one single page). It should show your full name, last 4 digits of your ID plus a secretly generated code for my use.

You should submit the work in class by the deadline. Only in pre-authorized exceptional cases will I accept an e-mailed sheet. If I have agreed to let you use this option, make sure you use the SAVE ANSWERS FILE option for the answer sheet , save the file in your PC and then email an attachment of that file and send it, saving the copy of the message in your INBOX. If you do not do this and send me the regular excel file, several bad things will happen:

- your answers might not be there (you did not "save the answer file", so perhaps your answers have not been ever saved)
- I cannot print your secret code, so I cannot tell if you are simply e-mailing someone else's job
- I will not dare open the file, because the regular file is susceptible of sending me all kinds of viruses from your PCs

You will receive ONE point per sheet as long as all the answers are correct, because you should be able to try again and again (or use goal seek) to get all the answers CORRECT. In exceptional cases when this is not possible to majority of students (due to a computer bug, for example) I will accept one or two answers wrong, otherwise the sheet will count ONLY if ALL answers show CORRECT.

In any case, the whole point of using these files is for you to become very familiar with the economic processes involved to achieve a good mark in the mid-term and the finals.

Production Possibility Frontier (PDF instructions) due on TUE WEEK 4

(note that there is a little bug in this file: when you use GOAL SEEK, you have to delete the "=" at the font of the =$I$20 if you want to choose the "address of the variable to change" by clicking on it). This might just be happening on my computer, but just in case, I thought I'd tell you.)

Demand (PDF instructions) due on due on TUE WEEK 5

(please ignore the fact that the author of this files uses “demand” sometimes when he should have meant “quantity demanded”…do not let this confuse you!)

Supply (PDF instructions) due on due on THU WEEK 5

Equilibrium (PDF instructions) due on TUE WEEK 6

(baseline is
Income $20,000 Ptacos $6.00 Pwine $20.00
Psauce $3.00 Plabor $5.00 tax $0.00)

Consumer Surplus and Producer Surplus (PDF instructions) due on THU WEEK 6

Elasticity (PDF instructions) due on TUE WEEK 7

Taxes and welfare (PDF instructions) SUBMIT during class on TUE WEEK9

Solutions:

Graph1 Graph2

Costs (PDF instructions) due on THU WEEK 10

Calculating cost functions (due on Thursday Week 9 in class) there are blue empty cells to fill in with your calculations and 4 questions in each of the 2 worksheets. PRINT your filled in answers and bring them to class.

These would be more or less the solutions. Note that I inserted in my file formulae so that I would not have to punch all the calculations one by one. Having done this calculations would have been tedious for you, but also useful to help you understand how costs evolve given constant input prices and changing returns (marginal and to scale). However, once you have done that a couple of times you can use the built-in formulae to check what happens when you change the prices of inputs.

Note that I have also asked excel to calculate, for your viewing pleasure, the AVC and AFC as separate columns from the ATC ones.

Profit under competition (PDF instructions) due on TUE Week 12

Solutions for the graphed part. The total profit is shown here, and this is the correct printout you were supposed to submit. The variable part of the profit (which is just the consumer surplus) is shown here.

Monopoly (PDF instructions) due on TUE WEEK 13 n class

You can try this last one for practice:
Price discrimination (PDF instructions) due on ??? in class make sure you read the instructions in the PDF file for the last two questions!!! Otherwise they are tricky!

Consumer Surplus and Producer Surplus (PDF instructions) SUBMIT on ???

This will remind us about the way in which we measure the efficiency of different allocations of resources, for example when we have a monopoly creating a deadweight loss.

See solutions above for the graphed parts of the file

The labour market (PDF instructions) SUBMIT during class on ???

I start from Week 0 (Wk0) every term. This is the week in which we have the first class. This week contains often less than 3 lectures. Wk 1 starts the first Monday after Wk0. The term has 12 weeks (plus Wk0)

Contact me:

You can find me here:
mailto:rmespi@stfx.ca

Department of Economics
St. Francis Xavier University
PO Box 5000, Antigonish
NOVA SCOTIA
CANADA B2G 2W5

Tel: 1-902 867 5443

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