This course introduces you to an economic way of thinking about constrained choice, such as (1) how a typical consumer makes choices about purchasing different goods when constrained by a budget, (2) how much of these goods the typical firm decides to produce when constrained by technology, and (3) how these decisions affect (and are in turn affected by) the free-market mechanism (i.e. price). We will also study how government intervention affects the standard free-market results, and under what circumstances government intervention positively and negatively affects societal welfare.
En route to answering each of these "how" questions, you will also learn fundamental concepts, hypotheses, and "rules" that economists use to help simplify the world, so that we can test our theories of consumer and firm behavior. Further, you will analyze different market structures within which consumers and firms interact; structures with varying degrees of competition among firms. Throughout the course, we will also touch on several real-world topics in economics, such as economic growth, international trade, and various types of taxation.