Course description
This course is one of the advanced level theoretical economics courses that will be taken by students majoring in economics. It presents the traditional pricing theories using advanced way of analysis such as calculus and game theory. It covers topics on preferences and budgetary constraints on choice, utility and optimal choice, demand, consumer’s surplus and equilibrium. In addition, the theory of producer’s behavior, the classical theory of consumer’s behavior and their extensions to uncertainty and time preference, the theory of market structures, game theory and oligopolistic behavior, asset markets, the theory of general equilibrium and welfare economics and extensions of the classical pricing theories to market failures.
Course outcomes
Upon the completion of this course, students will be able to:
• Understand the various pricing theories
• Understand consumer behavior
• Understand the producer behavior
• Differentiate the different types of market structures
• Analyze efficient resource allocations
• Examine interactions among producers that lead to market failure
• Evaluate the role of information in the market equilibrium and social welfare
Course contents
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🔽 0 h 59 min | Preferences and Budgetary Constraints on Choice
- The basic assumptions of preferences/choices
- The shapes of indifference curves for different types of choice combinations
- The law of diminishing marginal rate of substitution
- Budgetary and other constraints on choice
- The slope of the budget constraint
- Factors changing the budget constraint
🔽 0 h 43 min | Utility and Optimal Choice
- Utilities in functional forms
- Utility functions in indifference curves
- Shapes of indifference curves for different types of preferences
- Marginal rate of substitution from marginal utilities
- Monotonic transformations
- Optimal combinations of goods consumed
- Ordinary demand functions from optimal combinations
🔽 0 h 36 min | Demand
- Changes to optimal combinations when price of a commodity changes and ceteribus paribus
- Price offer curves and differentiate for different utility functions
- Ordinary demand functions for different types of utility functions
- Ordinary and inverse demand functions
🔽 1 h 18 min | Consumer’s Surplus
- Gains from trade
- Consumer surplus
- Compensating variation and equivalent variation
- Consumer surplus, compensating variation and equivalent variation
- Producer’s surplus
🔽 0 h 46 min | Equilibrium
- Market equilibrium
- The impact of excess supply and excess demand on market equilibrium
- The impact of quantity taxes on market equilibrium
- Tax incidence and dead weight loss of quantity taxation
This course includes:
4 h 23 min recorded video
Downloadable resources (books and articles)
One year access
Access on mobile and TV
Advanced Level
Certificate of completion