The course will begin by emphasizing scarcity as the essence of the economic problem; enumerate the fundamental tasks facing an economic system and the role of the price system in accomplishing these tasks. This will be followed by a discussion of the concept of opportunity cost and the production possibility frontier. Marginal cost and marginal benefit will be highlighted as the basis of efficient resource allocation, clearing the way for the standard topics in introductory microeconomics such as the laws of supply and demand, elasticity of demand and supply, theory of the consumer, theories of production and cost. The last part of the course will analyze the short-run profit maximizing behavior of the perfectly competitive firm and monopoly as contrasting types of market structures and investigate their welfare implications.
