ECON 202 Principles of Microeconomics

Overview of Course

This introductory course emphasizes the economic way of thinking. We will see how economists use models, data, and visualizations to understand human behavior and explain how markets work. Highlights include individual optimization, supply and demand as a resource allocation mechanism, how entrepreneurship and competition drive economic progress, and an emphasis on mastering the fundamental concept of a decentralized system. We will also examine inequality, monopoly power, and externality because, as you will learn, perfection is an impossible ideal. As we experience different countries and cultures, we will see how the principles of economics are universally applicable and provide a framework to process the waves of new information we encounter.