[ Material about exams needs to be updated (below, at @@) ]
For a version of this syllabus to print on a monochrome printer, click here
Principles of Microeconomics meets MW, 12-12:50, Middlebush Auditorium.
Professor: Ron Harstad, Head TA: GeorgeChikhladze. Both: econ4@missouri.edu. Course website at: http://blackboard.missouri.edu/. George's office: room 128 Professional Bldg, 882-8284. George's office hours: Mondays 1-3, Tuesdays 11-1.
Initial points of contact: For questions about course content, the Q & A forum at the Discussion Board of our Blackboard site. For questions about common problems and solutions, the FAQ forum at the Discussion Board of our Blackboard site. For individual-specific questions, email your TA, but preferably email the Harstad Team at econ4@missouri.edu; also email us here if Econ1014 is not among the courses listed when you login to Blackboard. Questions which can only be answered by Ron will be forwarded to him by one of the TA's handling that email address. (If you get a reply to an email which simply says "qa," that means we believe the answer will be useful to others, so it is being posted on the Q & A forum. A "QA!" reply means it is already there; you should have looked there first. Similarly, a reply which says "faq" means the question is being answered on the FAQ forum; "FAQ!" means it has been answered there earlier.)
Communication to you: The team will assume that an announcement posted on Blackboard by 4 pm Friday will be read by you before class on Monday, and by 4 pm Monday will be read before class on Wed. (unless Blackboard crashes in the interim, as we are told happens with enough frequency as to question someone's competence). We will assume that an announcement posted on Blackboard by 10 am the day of an exam will be read by you before you head to the exam. When turnaround time is shorter, or email more convenient, we will assume that an email sent to your official MU email address by 8:30 am the day of class will be read before class, and an mail sent by 3 pm the day of the final exam will be read by you prior to going to the final. Recall that you can arrange for your official MU email to be forwarded automatically to another email address of your choosing (hotmail, e.g.) if you check that other email more often (The University's DoIT has decided no longer to offer instructions on how to forward your mail, but suggests you get instructions from your email client, from gmail, Yahoo, hotmail, or by calling them at 882.5000). A number of students are unable to receive these messages because they fail to delete old messages from their student mailbox and so they exceed their storage quota and no new messages can be received. Please be sure to not only delete old messages frequently but to empty out the Deleted Messages folder as well. It takes both of these delete attempts to completely free up the memory space in your account and prevent it from exceeding the quota.
Required Text: N. Gregory Mankiw [2007], Principles of Microeconomics,4th Edition, Thomson-Southwestern. You probably should have this book with you whenever you will be standing in long lines, maybe even on your bedstand at night. (American Express described this book in a heavily advertised slogan.) Also required is the reader: Current and Classic Readings for Microeconomic Literacy. A subscription to Aplia (aplia.com), which provides web-based support that [i] substitutes for a study guide, and [ii] may provide access to some of the experiments that will affect your grade, is very nearly required. The Ecionomics Departmetn has worked to make this package relatively affordable; the bookstore is selling bundles that include the custom "Principles of Microeconomics,4th Edition Prepared for the University of Missouri - Columbia" which includes the chapters we will use and the reader. I understand the bookstore is also selling bundles that include a used copy of the Mankiw book and a used copy of the reader (the Economics Department has no way to guarantee that used copies of the Reader are complete).
Course Description: Microeconomics is about the behavior of rational individuals who can reliably be motivated by self-interest, and their interaction in markets, exchanges, contracts, bargains, or other economic and strategic situations. Markets exhibit forces that are stronger than and distinct from the powers of the actors on those markets. Self-interested behavior of individuals, households and firms is in many ways predictable, and yields economic outcomes on markets that are predictable results of the incentives they face.
Course approach: The Harstad Team will use an experimental approach to microeconomics. Labs will conduct experiments directly involving you in simplified economies, chosen for the impacts they help to isolate. In many ways, this is a course about a way of thinking about events, constraints, incentives, and outcomes, rather than some pre-set body of material to commit to study.
Grades: Your grade will be determined by the temperature on a corresponding day in April (1st if your last name begins with A, up through 26th for last names beginning with Z). Any complaints and we will switch to February. A more serious answer uses the following information:
1st week |
by Jan. 30, 10 am |
TUCE |
33 points |
|
Week of |
Feb. 4 |
Diary |
15 points |
|
Monday |
Feb. 25 |
During class |
Midterm |
100 points |
Week of |
March 10 |
Diary |
15 points |
|
Monday |
April 7 |
During class |
Midterm |
100 points |
Last week |
TBA |
TUCE |
87 points |
|
Sum, |
Over course |
Lab Dollars |
100 |
|
Friday. |
May 16 |
3:30-5:30 pm |
Final (Cumulative) |
150 points |
Total |
600 points |
Raw scores on midterms and final, as well as the weighted sum of the two scores on the TUCE, will be curved before entering the semester gradebook. Lab dollars will be scaled and summed, and that sclaed sum will then be curved before entering the semester gradebook. Total points will be converted to semester grades using the following scale:
grade |
from |
to |
Needs % |
A |
557 |
600 |
92.8% |
A- |
540 |
556 |
90.0% |
B+ |
523 |
539 |
87.2% |
B |
497 |
522 |
82.8% |
B- |
480 |
496 |
80.0% |
C+ |
463 |
479 |
77.2% |
C |
437 |
462 |
72.8% |
C- |
420 |
436 |
70.0% |
D+ |
403 |
419 |
67.2% |
D |
377 |
402 |
62.8% |
D- |
360 |
376 |
60.0% |
Above, TUCE stands for Test of Understanding of Collegiate Economics, a standardized test that will be given both at the beginning and the end of the semester. We are more interested in how well you do at the end than at the beginning, but would like to know how much economics you knew coming into the class. So each of the 33 questions on the TUCE will be worth 1 point at the beginning of the semester, each will be worth 2.64 points at the end of the semester. (The number of questions right at the beginning will be added to 2.64 times the number of questions right at the end. This weighted sum will then be curved.) The beginning-of-semester TUCE will be taken on Blackboard; you will be notified in adfvance of the arrangements for the end-of-semester TUCE. Note: any student who has not taken the TUCE by 11 pm January 25 will receive only half credit; any student who has not taken the TUCE by 10 am January 30 will be dropped from the class.
Every student is asked to fill out the Diary survey twice during the semester. The first diary will ask about the amount of time you spend on various activities related to the course during the week of Feb. 4. Please carry around a small notebook and make notes during that week, and then use those notes to answer the questions on Blackboard sometime between Feb. 10 and 10 pm Feb. 16. The second diary will ask about.time spent during the week of March 10, to be answered on Blackboard sometime between Mar. 16 and 10 pm Mar. 22 (at the start of spring break). If you answer all questions on the survey, you will get 15 points toward your semester grade no matter what the answers are that you provide. Blackboard will prevent the instructors (or anyone else) from knowing your individual answers; we will only have access to aggregate information about how all students answered. Please glance at the Diary survey before the week, and then keep rough track of how much time you spend on each indicated activity; at the end of the week, please answer the questions with your most honest estimates. The Diary is requested simply so that we can have some idea of how much time students spend on various activities related to the course. To receive credit, the Feb. 4 diary must be completed by 10 pm Saturday, Feb. 16; to receive credit, the Mar. 10 diary must be completed by 10 pm Saturday, Mar. 22.
Above, Lab Dollars are the sum of profits in labs over the course of the semester. Note that you cannot earn any lab dollars for an experiment in which you do not participate. We will endeavor to work with a student who cannot attend a lab at the scheduled time, to let that student take part at some other scheduled time. We cannot promise that will always work, and cannot promise we will always be able to keep track of your lab dollars if you participate at some time other than the scheduled time for your lab. In any one experiment, luck may give some student a better chance to earn lab dollars (e.g., by happening to become a buyer with high values, or a seller with low costs) than another student. This will even out over the course of several weeks. If recording lab dollars turns out to be too complicated for some experiments, or we experience a computer crash or other equipment failure, we reserve the right to use only 8 of the experiments for this part of the grade. At the end of the semester, lab dollars will be scaled and summed, and this summed score will be curved. The scaling of lab dollars means that a lab where lab dollars earned are in th ehundreds of dollars will be no more important than one where lab dollars earned are in the single digits.
Midterms will ask multiple-choice, short-answer, and problem-solving questions. The final will be only multiple choice. (I loathe multiple-choice questions, but the size of the class is a constraint, not a choice, and this is one of the ways that the constraint is binding.)
The Reader: Most of the articles in the reader are quite helpful; several are fun to read. We reserve the right to ask questions on exams about some of them; which ones will be listed on Blackboard at least two weeks before the exam. In class, we will sometimes mention a particular article in the Reader that will be relevant for the following lecture.
Extra Credit: 25 points of extra credit will be granted to those who behave as if they recognize that this is a large course where we all pitch in to make this an educational experience for all of us. Some of these extra credit points will be sacrificed by, for example, not keeping an appointment made with a member of the Harstad Team, by asking questions (in email or Discussion Board forums) already answered on the Syllabus or the Q & A and FAQ forums, or by any disruptive behavior or other behavior that forces the Team to put issues of individual grades ahead of issues of educating students. Substantial fractions of the 25 points will be sacrificed by disrespectful or disruptive posts on the Blackboard discussion forums. The following system is designed to reward helpful student answers of other students' questions on the website: at the sole discretion of the TAs, 5 points can be deducted for an answer deemed substantially incorrect or seriously misleading, but 10 points will be added for a basically correct and useful answer. In exceptional cases, TAs have the right to award up to 25 points of extra credit (beyond the basic 25 granted above) for an answer that is deemed to be particularly helpful to a number of other students. Extra credit can also be earned by contributing useful web links to websites containing economics explanations, data, research or glossaries to the Economics Links forum (a link by itself may earn nothing, a two-sentence explanation of what may be found there may make all the difference), or by instructively commenting on current events relevant to the course in the Current Events forum (bigotry, ad hominem attacks or other diatribe may cost points). Note that you will not receive any individual feedback on the particular number of extra credit points awarded for these activities (it takes us about 30 hours to tally and attribute the extra credit points, and we will only do that once). Postings on Blackboard after 3 pm May 16 cannot earn extra credit. A large number of postings in a short time period will not do you much good.
Entire Class Extra Credit: Class time is limited, and we cannot afford to have students arriving late, delaying the start of class by continuing to talk among themselves, having cellphone usage disrupt class, leaving early, or interfering with class by starting to talk or to get together books, notebooks, papers and backpacks before the end of class. We are going to reward (or penalize) the class as a whole, via the following system: If [a] a lecture can start without having to shout within 90 seconds of noon, [b] the lecture can continue at least to 12:48 without having to shout, [c] at most two rings of at most one cell phone disrupt class, [d] latecomers and early leavers create no disruptions, and [e] there are no other vocal or behavioral disruptions, then every student enrolled in the class, whether present that day or not, gains 2 additional points of extra credit. On the other hand, if [a] a lecture cannot start without having to shout before 12:03, [b] the lecture cannot continue past 12:46 without having to shout, [c] more than two rings or more than one cell phone disrupts class, [d] latecomers and early leavers create disruptions, or [e] there are other vocal or behavioral disruptions, then every student enrolled in the class, whether present that day or not, loses 4 points of extra credit.
Expectations: You are not high-school students, and we will not treat you as if you were. Nor do we expect you to act as if your role is simply to take notes and regurgitate them on exams. We will not take attendance, but you are expected to have a near-perfect attendance record, for the simple reason that you have an incentive: several hours of independent work are required to learn as much as one hour of paying close attention in class. Participation in your scheduled labs is not required, but the experiments have been found to be both fun and educational by most students in the past, to have a value toward learning the material that substitues for welll over 1 hour of individual studying time, and the lab dollars earned count toward your grade. You are expected to keep up with the material, for the simple reason that almost no one does well on course exams if much of what they know was crammed into their head the night before. You are expected to do homework on Aplia, and study review materials at the ends of chapters, unless you are already a master at the particular subject matter, and understand where it fits in the overall course. In summary, this course offers you a unique opportunity to learn useful skills and ways of thinking; if at your level of maturity that doesn't motivate you, taking attendance and requiring homework wouldn't make much difference.
Importance of course: Learning to think like an economist changes your life. Economics shows up everywhere, and this sort of thinking can help in more places than you can imagine. Learning economics is far more important than getting a good grade in this course. Nonetheless, this subject matter is so useful in upcoming courses that one letter grade higher in 1014 is likely to yield a GPA over your undergraduate career that is perhaps 0.5 higher (or more). No other course on campus can make this claim. Nor does the influence stop there: people who learn the economic way of thinking attain higher incomes in many walks of life; research has shown, for example, that new law school grads who were economics majors as undergraduates earn significantly more than other new law school grads.
Makeup Exams: Whatever they are, they do not exist in this course. Only the head TA is authorized to label a reason for missing an exam as permitted, and then only [a] when he is notified ahead of time, and documentation supplied afterwards, or [b] when a compelling case can be made that there was no way he could have been notified ahead of time (e.g., you still had two arms an hour before the exam), and documentation is supplied. A permissible reason for missing a midterm will lead to the final being worth 100 points more, but may make earning extra credit more difficult. A permissible reason for missing the final may allow you to take the final exam of another instructor in an upcoming semester (not necessarily the next semester, my choice, once I find out who will teach summer and how difficult his/her final will be), possibly with that other final counting 100% of the grade. We may offer you the option of bringing the exam to you while you are still in the Intensive Care Unit, but don't count on it.
Other exam rules: We have to organize giving exams to 400+ students at once. This will require your cooperation. @@
· We will be using several large classrooms around campus. It is your responsibility to check out the Room Assignments under Course Documents on Blackboard ahead of time, and to show up in the room assigned for your section. We cannot guarantee extra exams for students who go to the wrong room.
· No student will be allowed into the room to start an exam more than 15 minutes after the regularly scheduled exam starting time, and no student will be allowed to leave earlier than 20 minutes after the regularly scheduled start of the exam. Please be sure to show up on time for the exams. It is best if you show up at least 10 minutes early. This will allow us to start handing out the exams right on time so that you will have a full 60 minutes to complete your exam work.
· We are not the registrar. All the rooms we plan to use for exams have been reserved for several months now. Nonetheless, we have had it happen that some other event is scheduled in a room which had already been reserved for us, and we have frequently had it happen that someone is allowed to reserve the room up to a time way too close to when the room is to be available to us, and then has a speaker who drones on past the allotted time. In such events, please bear with us as we try to reorganize as smoothly as possible (review the first sentence under extra credit above).
· No calculators or any other study material are allowed during exams. The only items you may have out on your desk or within view are your exam, #2 lead pencil, eraser and student ID. All cellphones and pagers must be turned off and packed away during the exam. No hats are allowed during the exams.
· For the exams, you need to know the name of the TA assigned to your lab, and the ID letter the registrar assigned to your lab for the exam. This information will be entered by you on your scantron form.
· You must bring your student ID with you to the exam in order for us to accept your completed exam.
Americans with Disabilities Act. To request academic accommodations (for example, a note taker, or special seating for exams), students must first register with Disability Services, AO38 Brady Commons, 882-4696. It is the campus office responsible for reviewing documentation provided by students requesting academic accommodations, and for accommodations planning in cooperation with students and instructors, as needed and consistent with course requirements. Contact me soon, once you have registered with Disability Services. If you need other accommodations, if you have emergency medical information to share with me, or if you need special arrangements in case the building must be evacuated, please inform me promptly. To do so, see me privately after class, or at my office. As a general rule, accommodations for exams will be provided by the Economics Department; in most cases, we will not have any students in this class take exams in the Disability Services offices.
Website additions: In addition to the Discussion Board forums, pages will be added to the website from time to time. In particular, room assignments for exams will be posted there, several days in advance of the exam. Information about the type of exams (including, possibly, how many 4-page essay questions, how many hundreds of multiple choice questions, whether any of the questions will require topology or differential equations, in what language the exam will be written), at least an hour before the exam.
Review Sessions: Review sessions will be held in @@Middlebush Auditorium, 12-12:50 on the following Fridays: February 1, 8, 15 and 29, March 7 and 14, April 11, 18, and 25, May 2. In addition, there will be a review session the Sunday before each midterm and the Sunday before the final. The registrar will not confirm rooms and times for weekend review sessions until a few weeks into the semester. These are currently all scheduled to be in Middlebush Auditorium, and are currently scheduled at the following dates and times: Sunday, February 24, 6:30-8 pm, Sunday, April 6, 6:30-8 pm; these Sunday evening review sessions are the nights before the two midterms); Sunday May 11, 6:30-8 pm. Check announcements on Blackboard the week prior, to see if we have been forced to change the time or place. These review sessions will generally be run by the TAs, but Ron might show up to heckle.
How to Do Well In This Course:
1. In many ways, this is a course about a way of thinking about events, constraints, incentives, and outcomes, rather than some pre-set body of material to commit to study. The exam material is based on the book as well as on the lecture material, so attending lectures as well as reading all assigned text chapters is critical to doing well in the course. At the Friday review sessions; the TAs generally will be there to answer your questions, rather than to go over a pre-set list of topics and examples. I recommend at least skimming quickly through the rest of the chapter over the weekend, or some time after the lab and prior to the next lecture; if the material is not clear after the Wednesday lecture, then re-reading the chapter more carefully shortly following that lecture, preferably still the same day, is again a most effective use of your time. This will give you a chance to figure out what questions you have for the Friday review session, or to check for or post on the Q & A forum. If you don’t understand the material after you’ve skimmed, listened to the lecture and then read again more carefully, this means you should promptly get help from one of these sources for further clarification of the material. Please do not wait until right before the exam or until the end of the semester for help, since this material builds on the earlier material and you will fall behind in the course if you do not keep up on nearly a day-to-day basis.
2. Use the help offered by your TA, your fellow students, and the entire Harstad Team. It is important that you don’t fall behind. Analytical problem-solving is a significant part of this course. This means it is critical that you not put off studying and questions until the day before the exam. Get answers to your questions about the material as your questions occur. This will guarantee you better understanding of the course material.
3. Attend all lectures and participate in all labs. Paying close attention at lectures is a more efficient use of an hour devoted to the course material than merely reading the book. Attending labs is how you get the extra benefits of learning about economics by participating in economies under laboratory controls. You have no way of knowing whether the prices you pay in grocery stores and restaurants, and online, are at, above, or below equilibrium prices. Since we can tell you that information about the lab economies, your experiences in the labs offer particularly educational opportunities. Plus, the profits earned accumulate as part of your grade.
4. Take advantage of resources. In
addition to the review sessions, TAs, materials on Aplia,
Q&A on Blackboard, there are tutoring resources. [a]
Economics students can be hired as tutors; contact the economics department,
118 Professional Building, 882-0063. [b] Tutors are available without charge;
contact the
5. Economics is not the kind of subject matter best learned alone. There is a big difference between having been exposed to concepts, and to the relationships among them, and being familiar with them. Familiarity is what makes for better exam performance, far superior learning retention, and thus better use of economic thinking in later courses and in future economic decisions. I strongly recommend that you find a study partner, preferably someone else in 1014 section 3, but possibly in another section. The key part of studying together is to have one of you explain some concept, or the reason why a lab outcome occurred, and have the other one point out errors, as well as very imprecise language, or missing logical linkages in the explanations. Before you lose a friend, switch roles and have the other one do the explaining. An hour a week of this kind of back-and-forth interchange is more effective than 3 hours a week studying on your own.
Ron's office hours: generally Mondays 1:20-1:50, Wed.’s 2-3. Knowledge of these hours will suggest that you have actually read the syllabus.