Applied economics for managers

Lectures: 4 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session

Recitations: 1 session / week, 1 hour / session

The course addresses the need for choice implied by the scarcity of resources. The fact of scarcity necessitates that individuals, firms, and societies choose among alternative uses – or allocations – of its limited resources. At the same time, the various choices made by different economic agents must be mutually consistent. For example, the expansion of one sector accompanied by that sector's increased use of labor and capital is only possible if accompanied by a net contraction in other industries. Markets are a mechanism to achieve such reconciliation. In this first part of the class we seek to understand how economists model the choice process of individual consumers and firms, and how markets work to coordinate these choices. We also examine how well markets perform this function using the economist's criterion of market efficiency.

The reading is primarily from: Parkin, Michael. Microeconomics. 6th ed. Sydney: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 2004. ISBN: 0321226577. Some selected additional readings are found in the course packet provided by the Sloan Fellows Program.

Students will be graded as follows:

Don't show me this again

This is one of over 2,200 courses on OCW. Find materials for this course in the pages linked along the left.

MIT OpenCourseWare is a free & open publication of material from thousands of MIT courses, covering the entire MIT curriculum.

No enrollment or registration. Freely browse and use OCW materials at your own pace. There's no signup, and no start or end dates.

Knowledge is your reward. Use OCW to guide your own life-long learning, or to teach others. We don't offer credit or certification for using OCW.

Made for sharing. Download files for later. Send to friends and colleagues. Modify, remix, and reuse (just remember to cite OCW as the source.)

Learn more at Get Started with MIT OpenCourseWare