Knowledge
This course provides a set of basic tools appropriate for economic analysis in all fields of economics:
- Consumer Theory: preferences, utility functions, marginal rate of substitution, budget set, demand functions, consumer surplus.
- Theory of decision under uncertainty: preference for risk, risk attitudes, the use of information, the value of information.
- Theory of the Firm: inputs and outputs, production function, opportunity cost, sunk costs, fixed and variable cost, total, average and marginal cost, short and long run costs, supply function.
- Analysis regulatory policies of competitive and monopolistic markets: price controls, quotas, maximum prices, taxes and subsidies, tariffs.
Abilities
The course material teaches students how to:
- Frame economic problems by using formal models amenable to quantitative analysis.
- Use standard methods to solve decision problems.
- Apply equilibrium analysis to identify the results of the interactions of economic agents.
Aptitudes
The course encourages students to:
- Analyze economic problems without prejudices, and with precision and rigor.
- Reason critically.
- Learn autonomously.
- Argue a viewpoint showing its foundation and appreciating the merits of other opinions.