Economics 4011

Top | | Course Schedule | Contact

Fall 2011 (material from other quarters)

by Rohan Dutta and David K. Levine

All materials distributed in class, plus slides from the lectures and due dates will be available at this web site. For information about how to access the material on this site, click here. Changes in the course and other course news can be found here.


  Discussion, announcements and news

  Exam rules and tips

   Information on accessing material from this site

  Course schedule and slides from lectures

  Contact information and office hours for the Professor and TAs

  Background Reading: Pure Exchange General Equilibrium; Production Theory


This is the intermediate level microeconomics course for economics majors. It covers the basics tools required for economics, and is relatively mathematical.

FORMAT: The course has two instructors each of whom will give half the lectures and will be jointly responsible for the content and grading of the course.

PREREQUISITES: You must have Economics 103 and Mathematics 131 and 132. You are also expected to be at least concurrently enrolled in the mathematics for economists course Economics 493. We will make serious use of calculus. We will do differentiation, simple equation solving, and a limited amount of integration. It is crucial that you feel comfortable with these operations. If calculus is something you once knew but are now fuzzy on, you will find this course difficult.

TEXTS: The OPTIONAL text is Martin Osborne An Introduction to Game Theory.

LECTURES AND SECTIONS: You are responsible for all material covered in lecture and section meetings as well as the required reading.

SLIDES: The main resource for the class are the slides which can be found on the course schedule page. These are the slides used in lecture, and you are encouraged to print them out and bring them to class to take notes on. You may wish to print more than one slide on a page: Adobe Acrobat allows you to do this from the print menu. Click on the "properties" button. The next dialog will give you the option to select the number of "pages per page" that you would like to print.

GRADING: There will be 4-5 ungraded problem sets with answers. You will be graded on two midterms and the final exam. The final exam will have three parts; the first two parts cover the same material as the two midterms. Your final grade will be based on the higher of your grade on each of those two parts and the corresponding midterm, plus the final section of the final. All three sections will be equally weighted.

EXAMS: Dates of the exams are given in the course schedule. The midterm is given in class. The final exam is mandatory. You must take the final exam on the scheduled day and time - check your schedule before enrolling in the class to make sure this will not be a problem.

REGRADING: We are always happy to talk to you about how exams are graded. If a score has been tallied incorrectly, we will gladly correct it. Otherwise, if you feel your exam has been graded unfairly, you should bring it to me (and not to the TA). In each case you must submit the entire assignment for regrading, you may not just ask to get extra points for a particular question. If errors in your favor are discovered, you may receive a lower grade. It is not fair to ask for a few more points on a particular question because it might net you a higher grade in the class, but we are all concerned that your grade fairly reflect your performance in the class. Please do not ask us what the cutoff is for the next highest grade. NO EXAM SUBMITTED IN PENCIL IS ELIGIBLE FOR REGRADING.

EXAM EQUIPMENT: We will issue bluebooks for the exam. Do all scratchwork in the bluebook. You must use pen. Do not remove pages or erase: simply put a line through errors or scratch work. Calculators are not allowed, rulers are OK.

EXAMS TIPS: Several tips for getting the best  possible score on exams.

CORNERSTONE: Some students have registered with Disability Resources and receive exam accommodations consisting of extra time to take the exam. If you are such a student you must take the exam at Cornerstone and you must take the exam under the exact same rules as other students in the class. In particular: you must start the exam at the same time as the rest of the class, you may neither start earlier nor later. If you arrive late, that reduces the amount of time you have to work on the exam. You may take a break if you need to, but that break counts against the time you have to work on the exam - if you take a ten minute break during a three hour exam, then you are only allowed two hours and fifty minutes on the exam. On the final exam you also must follow the same rules as the rest of the class. That means that you have exactly 1/3rd of the total time for each of the three parts of the exam. You must turn in each part before receiving or working on the next part. Please make sure that the proctor stamps the time you started and completed each part of the exam. You must also follow any special instructions written on the exam. Proctors will be given instructions to make sure that these rules are followed, but it is your obligation to follow the rules regardless of what the proctors do. If there are problems with the proctoring you should report by email what happened as soon after the exam ends as it is practical.