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The course will enable students to:
- apply microeconomic concepts and insights to concrete consumer and producer choices;
- determine how consumer and producer choices depend on the context, for instance market structure or government policy;
- assess how the competitive situation in markets affects consumer welfare, producer welfare, and welfare of society as a whole.
- determine market equilibrium and understand how changes in the market environment will affect market equilibrium;
- assess the effectivity of (government) measures to enhance the working of markets, for instance in case of externalities;
- model strategic interactions with game-theoretic concepts;
- determine the effects of incomplete and asymmetric information on market functioning and welfare;
- use mathematics to solve and analyse concrete choice problems.
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Microeconomics is about making choices on the level of individuals (e.g. you as a consumer) and businesses (e.g., how much to produce as a company). But these individual decisions are not taken in a vacuum. The actions of consumers and producers come together in the market place, where consumer demand (co-)determines what is optimal for an enterprise to produce, and where producers determine what and how much you as a consumer can buy. Furthermore, depending on the market structure, decisions by one company may have an impact on what other companies can do. A market situation with only few competitors (oligopoly) will lead to different production decisions than a market where many, small enterprises compete (perfect competition). In other words, market structure is important for the decisions a company makes. And by levying taxes or giving subsidies, the government also comes into play. Government may have good reasons to interfere in the market, particularly if the market fails to provide the socially optimal number of goods and services (for instance, too much CO2 emissions, or too few healthy products).
The course microeconomics provides you with the building blocks to understand these issues and how they relate to each other. After completing the course you will not only be familiar with the basic principles of microeconomics, but it will also enable you to recognize and apply microeconomic principles in practice. Microeconomics gives you a thorough basis in economics and is a cornerstone for many follow-up courses in the curriculum Economics and Business Economics at Radboud University. |
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| Microeconomics is a typical introductory course, but the courses mentioned below are essential to fully understand the material. The course involves mathematics and students who did not take a course in mathematics should realise that they must invest considerably more time to understand the material or else they will experience severe difficulties.
Mathematics in Economics & Business |
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| Written exam and assignments.
The assignments could yield credit points that will be added to the (unrounded) result of the exam (provided the exam result is 5.0 or higher). Results obtained during previous editions of the course are no longer valid. |
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Nearly all lectures will be recorded. The recordings will become available as a weblecture for a limited period of time after the lecture has taken place, and then again some time before the exam. Working group meetings will not be recorded. Attending working groups is mandatory.
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