Course Description
Fundamental economic principles in determining efficient adjustments in agricultural resource use consistent with economic growth, and changing technology and economic conditions.
Athena Title
Microecon Theory with Apps II
Prerequisite
AAEC 6580-6580L
Semester Course Offered
Offered spring
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
This course is designed to build upon the intermediate microeconomics course with the intent to further investigate the efficiency and equity impacts on social welfare. Risky choice, alternative market structures and missing markets are introduced. The insight which elementary mathematics affords the study of economics is explored. Students will be expected to learn how decentralized decisions will result in a Pareto- optimal allocation of resources provided there are no missing markets. With missing markets, students will be expected to learn how to develop mechanism designs for achieveing a second- best Pareto-optimal allocation of rexources. The objective of the course is to have students learn how to think as an economist in addressing the problems of income inequity, negative esternalities (e.g., pollution), nonrival commodities (e.g., education), and information symmetries (e.g., used car market). Risk and uncertainty in terms of market risk shiftin and optimal level of self insurance are also covered along with intertemporal preferences in terms of the separation theorem (e.g., determining the optimal level of education and current consumption expenditures). The recent growth in microeconomics has resulted in the difficulty of covering all the material in one semester. With this second course, students will be exposed to all the major areas of microeconomics. By completing this course sequence, they are expected to have learned to be economists.
Topical Outline
Risky Choice Insurance Decision Rules in Risk Analysis Unknown Preferences Competitive Inputs Markets Imperfect Competition in Factor Markets Intertemporal Choice Human Capital Welfare Economics Theory of the Second Best Bilateral Externalities Multilateral Externalities Public Goods Asymmetric Information Principal-Agent
Syllabus
Public CV