2 hours lecture, l hour recitation. Unlike conventional introductory courses, the material is presented primarily through the use of in-class experiments which give students direct experience with how economic and related political mechanisms work. After each experiment, the class discusses what the experiment was designed to show, what it says about how real social institutions work, and how economists go about modeling the phenomena observed in the experiment. Conditions for economic efficiency are developed, and the effects of various forms of market structure on the behavior of firms and households and on economic welfare are analyzed. Numerous illustrations are provided of the manner in which theoretical propositions explain and predict actual events in the economy.
Microeconomic theory is used as the basis for formulating public policy guidelines.
Facility with the use of these tools provides the student of economics with the means for making sense out of what can otherwise be an overwhelming mass of data. The econometrics sequence is, therefore, designed to introduce students in economics to the statistical tools and concepts that economists use most frequently. The first course in this sequence, Econometrics 1, has three parts. The first two parts introduce and develop concepts in probability and statistics that are used extensively in econometrics. Initially this takes the student through a discussion of probability distributions, cumulative distribution functions, probability density functions, and random variables.