The course is divided into 4 units:

Required Exams (4 exams that make up 100% of semester grade)

Extra Credit Homework (4 HW assignments, each can add up to 10 points to an exam score)

Exams (Required)

You will have 4 equally weighted exams that comprise 100% of your semester grade.  Exams may be a mixture of short answer, essay, model work, multiple-choice, and/or true-false responses. The fourth exam will partly focus on material from the 4th unit of the semester, but will also be cumulative over key concepts and skills from the entire semester.  Your score on exam #4 can replace one lower exam score from the semester. So, exam #4 will either count once (if it is your lowest score) or twice (it would replace one lower score from the first 3 exams). For example, if your exam scores are 82, 66, 92, and 88, then the 88 on exam #4 would replace the 66 on exam #2 (so the 4 exam scores would be 82, 88, 92, 88). This is designed to reward students for improvement by the end of the semester (as course content is cumulative) and to basically provide students with a “free pass” for one of the first four exams (in case you miss an exam or perform poorly on an exam, for whatever reason).

Make-up exams may be arranged in advance, but will not be made available after the scheduled exam date and time. 

Homework (Highly recommended and incentivized, but not required)

You will have 4 extra credit homework assignments (due at the start of each of the 4 exams) that can add points to your exam scores. In order to receive credit, the homework must be submitted at the beginning of the exam and must be entirely completed – no credit will be awarded for late work nor incomplete work.  Depending on the quality of the work, a completed homework assignment can add up to 7 points to your exam score for that unit.  If you submit a homework assignment in a group of 3 to 5 students from the class, a completed homework assignment can add an additional 3 points (so up to 10 points total) to your exam score for that unit.  Each assignment will be roughly 10-15 pages of writing, quantitative analysis, and model work.  The homework assignments and accompanying articles will be downloaded from Blackboard, printed out, completed in the provided spaces, and submitted at each scheduled exam. You are encouraged (though not required) to work in groups of 3 to 5 students on your homework assignments.  Each student will have their own copy of the homework assignment that they will work on for individual practice and studying purposes.  Each group will submit 1 assignment with their final answers that will represent the collaboration of the group members. Each student in a group will receive the same points.  These homework assignments are chronologically aligned with our course content and will allow you to utilize the concepts and skills you learn as you get to practice on your own time.  Homework assignments provide good practice for the concepts and skills you will be expected to demonstrate you have learned on your exams and completing them is strongly encouraged, though not required.

Required texts/materials

Robin Bade and Michael Parkin: Foundations of Microeconomics, 9th edition, 2021

You will NOT need MyLab access, so don't worry about the supplemental online resources that can be bundled with the book. Not much changes from edition to edition, so honestly an 8e or 7e would probably be fine as well (however, the page numbers won't align if I reference particular pages).  Usually I find that students can either buy or rent a used 8e copy of this textbook for ~$15 from online vendors (such as Amazon, Chegg, etc.). Obviously, the ACC bookstore carries it, but they charge far more for it, so I suggest looking elsewhere to get a used copy of the book.  I also place a few older editions on reserve at the HYS library, which you can obviously read for free there.

Student Learning Outcomes

Students who complete this course will be able to:

1. apply the basic concepts of scarcity and opportunity cost;
2. manipulate the basic demand and supply model to determine an equilibrium price and quantity, changes to equilibrium price and quantity, and their impact on resource allocation;
3. critically evaluate the usage of policy in microeconomic markets;
4. explain the theory of consumer behavior and the theory of the firm;
5. model and explain the theoretical market structures of perfect competition and imperfect competition.

Discipline Program Student Learning Outcomes

Students who complete this course will be able to:

1. model and explain under what circumstances markets are capable of creating socially optimal and socially suboptimal outcomes (PSLO 1: Socially Optimal and Suboptimal Outcomes);
2. defend and criticize the role of economic policy in a mixed market economy (PSLO 2: Economic Policy);
3. critically evaluate economic data (PSLO 3: Economic Data).