Economics 103B
Introduction to Political Economy: Microeconomics
  Fall 2007

Class Information
    Professor Charles Moul (moul@artsci.wustl.edu, 935-5836)
    Class meetings: 2:30-4:00 Monday and Wednesday in Louderman 458
    Office hours: Tuesday 10:00-12:00, Wednesday 10:00-11:00, and by appointment in McMillan 248
    Texts: Mankiw's Principles of Microeconomics (4th edition, though 3rd is acceptable substitute) and Landsburg's The Armchair Economist

Teaching Assistants
Graduate
    Azamat Abdymomunov (aabdymom@artsci.wustl.edu), 12:00-2:00 Monday in Eliot 212
    Sandy Vicente (scvicent@artsci.wustl.edu), 3:00-5:00 Tuesday in Eliot 211

Undergraduate: Office hours held jointly 4:30-5:30 Monday and Thursday in Eliot 200E
    Ali Collins (akcollin@artsci.wustl.edu)
    Morgan Grossman-McKee (grossmanmckee@gmail.com)

Exam schedule
    Exam 1: October 8 (Markets and Prices: How they work and why they often work well)
            Covers Mankiw's Chapters 1-9; Landsburg's Chapters 1, 2, 21, 7, 8, 20

    Exam 2: November 5 (Consumers, Producers, and Monopolies: The origins and subtleties of demand and supply)
            Covers Mankiw's Chapters 21, 13-16; Landsburg's, Chapters 4, 16, 17            

    Exam 3: December 5 (Market Failures and Poverty: Some more situations where markets don't necessarily work well)
            Covers Mankiw's Chapters 10-12, 18-20; Landsburg's Chapters 9, 24, 13

Documents (in pdf form: To download Acrobat Reader to read pdf files, click here.)
    Syllabus (contains class policies on exams and homework assignments)
Weeks 1-6
    Homework 1 , Answers  ... link to more Three Stooges info (pioneers in highbrow pop culture)
    Homework 2 , Answers
    Homework 3 , Answers
    Exam I, Answers, Grade Mapping : Average score: 68.3
Weeks 7-11
    Homework 4 , Answers
    Homework 5 , Answers
    Homework 6 , Answers
    Exam II, Answers, Grade Mapping : Average score, 70.0
Weeks 12-15
    Homework 7 , Answers
    Homework 8 , Answers
    Exam III, Answers, Exam Grades, Course Grades and Mappings

The End
    The above document following the exam's answer key includes the following information: Scores on Exam 3 and grades for the course (both assigned by WU Student ID number ... any version of Social Security numbers as public identification is now forbidden), the mapping of exam 3 scores to letter grades, and the lower bounds of course scores that map to course letter grades. Because my wife finally fell ill with the bug that has been laying me low since Thanksgiving, I anticipate not being in the office much for the coming week as I watch the kids. If after examining the exam answers and calculating your course score, you believe that there has been some grievous error, send me an email and we can arrange an appointment.
    Good luck on your remaining finals and enjoy your break.   CM

Fun extra reading on Economics
    Here is a nice essay on the economics of U.S. health insurance.
    Here is a Landsburg essay on Steve Levitt's research on LoJack (apropos the Fall 2003 exam).
    Here is a brand-new Landsburg essay on some necessary steps that should be taken before engaging in economic analysis of global warming.
    What happens when the Wall Street Journal's exotic car columnist takes a (properly red) combine for a test spin? Find out here.
    Learn more about those wacky seahorses at Project Seahorse. Here's an actual Australian seahorse farm. And here's a Hawaiian one.
    Want to learn more about disco? Who wouldn't! Try looking here and here. And here are some YouTubes to really get things going.
    Here is an article from February when Hugo Chavez imposed price controls on many items in Venezuela.
    Here is the revisionist take on the Dutch tulip "bubble" by Daniel Gross in July 2004.
    Apropos of our discussion of the minimum wage as a price floor with the subsequent deadweight loss, here is a Wall Street Journal editorial from two years ago on state minimum wages.

... and now for something completely different:

    You'll be asked to complete course evaluations shortly. If you can't be nice, at least be funny. Here are some fine examples of the latter.

    Several of you have inquired into the nature of the final exam. While I make no promises, I can safely say that it will not be as creative as this one ... though the possibility of eliciting such a brilliant response is some temptation for me to try.

    The topics we will be covering (equity, the environment, poverty) are deep thoughts and can sometimes be rather depressing. Click here for more light-hearted deep thoughts.   

    We will be exploring more applications of Law and Economics throughout the remainder of the semester. Click here for some less-idealized actual court transcripts.

     Here are two more riddles for those of you who like the practice.

     Economists are often accused of turning economic problems into riddles for no good reason. If you don't need a good reason, click here to exercise your brain on some classics.  

    Er, viewing: I've made a big deal about monetary policy being one topic that microeconomists happily concede belongs in macroeconomics. That said, Ben Bernanke has been in the news quite a bit lately. Here is an entertaining take on his appointment last year from one of the other prominent candidates for the position, Glenn Hubbard. The guy singing looks a lot like Glenn, and the CBS references are to Columbia Business School (where Prof. Hubbard is dean).

    This isn't exactly fun, but I'm curious how you would do on this civics test. Evidently, the average score for graduating college seniors is lower than that of incoming freshmen at most elite American schools. (This score discrepancy is consistent with the idea of the university as a storehouse for knowledge ... it keeps getting more and more full as the university keeps extracting info from smart freshment before they graduate.)

    We talked in class about the concept of the benevolent social planner. Click here for some thoughts on its antithesis.

    As mentioned in class, the can opener joke is not a favorite of economists, as we believe it misses the point of why economists use assumptions. Given that economists are fixated upon efficiency, this joke is much better.