BUEC 311-B2: Business Economics, Organizations, and Management
Winter 2013
Meeting times: Tuesday and Thursday, 14:00–15:20 Location: Tory BW 1
Instructor: Branko Boˇskovi´c
2-32L Business Building Tel: (780) 248-1055
Email: [email protected]
Office hours: Tuesday 11:00–12:00 or by appointment
Course Objectives:
This course will provide students with the foundations of microeconomic analysis. The primary objective is to develop the skill to apply fundamental microeconomic concepts and principles to a wide range of managerial, organizational, and public policy decisions. Topics will include examining the behaviour of consumers and market demand; the behaviour of firms and market supply; market forces, price formation, and resource allocation, and; market power and
price-setting behaviour. Additionally, students will be introduced to some more advanced aspects of microeconomic analysis.
Prerequisites:
ECON 101, ECON 102, and MATH 113 or equivalent. Students may receive credit for only one of BUEC 301, BUEC 311, or MANEC 301 or ECON 383. Not open to students with previous credit in ECON 281.
Required Materials:
The course will make use of the textbook Microeconomics, 8th edition, by Robert Pindyck and Daniel Rubinfeld, along with the MyEconLab student access kit (http://www.myeconlab.com).
Announcements and lecture notes will be posted on ULearn (https://ulearn.ualberta.ca/), to which all registered students will have access. It isvery important to check ULearn regularly for any updated class information.
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Course Grading:
A student’s overall grade is calculated as follows:
Component Weight Time
Individual assignments 20% Weekly, due Mondays at 21:00 Midterm exam 25% February 26, in-class
Group project 15% March 29
Final exam 40% April 19 at 14:00 (tentative)
Individual Assignments:
Graded homework will be assigned most weeks for individual and independent completion and will be due on Monday at 21:00. The assignments will consist of analytical questions and multiple choice questions which are designed to help you understand the course material. The assignments will be administered online through MyEconLab, which will require the use of a computer with internet access along with access to the MyEconLab student access kit. A student’s seven best results on the weekly assignments will count towards the individual assignment portion of your grade. Additional questions that will not be graded will be suggested for practice and preparation for the exams. Students are strongly encouraged to complete these additional questions.
Group Project:
A written assignment to be completed in groups of four is due March 29. The assignment is to analyze a chosen firm or a division of a firm that operates in Alberta. Students will be given specific questions about the firm and the market it operates in which must be addressed in the project. The questions will test your understanding of the theory we cover in class and your ability to apply microeconomic theory to a specific case study. An electronic version of the paper is to be submitted to the course website by midnight. The penalty for late submissions is 20% for every day (or part thereof) that the project is late. The paper’s body of text should be no more than 12 pages and the paper must include a cover page and a list of references.
Text should be one-and-a-half or double spaced with reasonable margins and 12 point font.
The project will be evaluated on a number of criteria that will partly include writing clarity and quality of economic reasoning. The full set of criteria and grading scheme will provided along with the project questions in February.
Exams:
Two exams, a midterm and a final exam, will be administered. The midterm exam will be administered in-class on February 26. The final exam, tenatively set for April 19, is
comprehensive. Please verify the date and time of the final exam with the registrar’s office. If the midterm and the student has an accompanying medical note, the midterm portion of the total grade will be shifted to the final exam. If a student requests regrading of part of an exam, I reserve the right to regrade the entire exam. All such requests must be submitted within one week after the respective exam is returned.
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Academic Integrity:
The University of Alberta is committed to the highest standards of academic integrity and honesty. Students are expected to be familiar with these standards and to uphold the policies of the University in this respect. Students are urged to familiarize themselves with the provisions of the Code of Student Behaviour, available through the University’s Governance website
(http://www.governance.ualberta.ca/), and avoid any behaviour which could potentially result in suspicions of cheating, plagiarism, misrepresentations of facts and/or participation in an offence. All factual information taken from other sources such as books, journal articles, websites, etc., must be referenced in any submitted work. Academic dishonesty is a serious offence and can result in suspension or expulsion from the University.
Course Outline:
The following outline is tenative. The order of topics will stay the same, although the dates may not correspond exactly as the semester progresses.
Dates Topic Readings
Jan 8, 10 Introduction Chp. 1–2
Jan 15, 17 Consumer choice Chp. 3–5
Jan 22, 24 Consumer choice Chp. 3–5
Jan 29, 31 Consumer choice/Producer behaviour Chp. 3–5, 6–7
Feb 5, 7 Producer behaviour Chp. 6–7
Feb 12, 14 Producer behaviour Chp. 6–7
Feb 19, 21 Reading Week
Feb 26 Midterm exam
Feb 28 Perfect competition Chp. 8–9
Mar 5, 7 Perfect competition/Market power Chp. 8–9, 10–11
Mar 12, 14 Market power Chp. 10–11
Mar 19, 21 Monopolistic competition and oligopoly Chp. 12
Mar 26, 28 Competitive strategy Chp. 13
Mar 29 Group project deadline
Apr 2,4 Externalities and asymmetric information Chp. 17, 18
Apr 9, 11 Final wrap-up
Apr 19 (tentative) Final exam
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