SYMBIOSIS INTERNATIONAL (DEEMED UNIVERSITY)
(Established under section 3 of the UGC Act 1956)
Re - accredited by NAAC with ‘A’ Grade
Founder: Prof. Dr. S. B. Mujumdar, M.Sc.,Ph.D. (Awarded Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri by President of India)
(Established under section 3 of the UGC Act 1956, by notification No.F.9-12/2001-U3
Government of India)
Accredited by NAAC with ‘A’ Grade
Founder: Prof. Dr. S. B. Mujumdar, M.Sc.,Ph.D. (Awarded Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri by
President of India)
__________________________________________________________________________
_Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Sub Committee of Economics - Specialization for Curriculum Development
Under Graduate
Course Title: Principles of Microeconomics
Course Code: T6775
Number of Credits: 4
Level: 2
Learning Objectives: (using Blooms taxonomy)
After completing this course, students should have developed a range of skills enabling
them to examine introductory economic concepts, use those concepts to analyze specific
questions and extend application of these techniques to relate to a number of questions
relevant to the operation of the real economy.
By the end of this course, students should be able to:
• explain the nature of economics in dealing with the issue of scarcity,
• explain supply and demand analysis to analyze the impact of economic events on
markets,
• explain the behavior of consumers in terms of the demand for products,
• explain and evaluate the factors affecting firm behavior, such as production and costs
• recognize the performance of firms under different market structures,
• recognize market failure and the role of government in dealing with those failures,
• explain how input markets work,
• use economic analysis to evaluate controversial issues and policies
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Pedagogy:
1. Interactive class discussions on every concept. Small class size
2. Use of articles, news clipping, videos, etc. to further explain concept i.e. a practical
understanding regarding the concept.
3. Evaluations are conducted throughout the semester to ensure that the students’ outcomes
are appraised.
Course Outline
S.No. Topic Hours
Supply And Demand
o Introduction to Economics & the economic problem: scarcity and
choice.
1 o Gain understanding of the basic forces of supply and demand, 4
elasticity, and implications for price, quantity sold and consumer
behaviour.
Consumer Theory
o Introduction to analysis of consumer behaviour.
o Analyze decisions based on underlying preferences, model
preferences into a utility function and use this utility function to
make predictions about what a consumer will do given their
income and prices of goods.
2 o Preferences and Utility: Constrained Utility Maximization - 12
Mathematical Derivation and Graphical Analyses
o Budget Constraints
o Deriving Demand Curves
o Income and Substitution effects
o Applications of Consumer Theory: Labour-Leisure Trade-off
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Producer Theory
o Study of Firm, or Producer behaviour: short run, long run,
returns to scale, margin decision rule.
o Analyse firms' decisions mathematically using a production
3 function, calculate optimal level of production, costs, and 6
profits.
o Introduction to how firms interact in a competitive market in the
short-run and the long-run. Understand economies and
diseconomies of scale.
Markets, Maximizers and Efficiency
o Understand the maximization assumption that economists make
in explaining the behaviour of consumers and firms.
o Apply concepts of marginal benefit and marginal cost to
understanding the margin decision rule. Define and discuss
consumer surplus, producer surplus, dead weight loss.
o Understand market conditions that must exist to achieve
4 efficient allocation of resources in an economy. Relationship 8
between efficiency and equity.
o Introduction to Market Failures, Public and Private Goods,
Common Property Resources, Externalities & role of
government intervention
Introduction to Market Structures and Perfect Competition
o Overview of different market structures and salient features of
each.
o What do economists mean by perfect competition, basic
assumptions of the model, reasoning for price-taking behaviour,
5 determination of output in short-run and long run (with graphs), 8
application of margin decision rule, shutdown point, difference
between accounting and economic profit, effect of expansion or
contraction of industry on costs in the long run, effect of
changes in prices, outputs and fixed costs in short and long run.
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Imperfect Competition
o How firms operated in imperfect market structures.
o Monopoly: natural monopoly, monopoly model, monopoly and
efficiency, comparison of models: perfect competition versus
monopoly, public policy responses to monopoly
o Monopolistic Competition: features & comparison with perfect
competition and monopoly models, short-run and long-run
equilibrium
6 o Oligopoly: Features and comparison the other market structures, 10
measures to determine degree of concentration in the industry,
collusion models in oligopoly, introduction to application of
game theory in oligopoly,
o Implications of these alternate structures for consumer welfare.
o Extensions of imperfect competition: advertising and price
discrimination.
Topics from Intermediate Economics
o Labour and wages in perfect competition.
o Introduction to interest rates and capital markets.
o Introduction to Welfare Economics
o Understand broader questions about how much market
participants, both consumers and producers, benefit from
consuming or producing a certain good.
7 o Learn how to analyse the changes in social welfare that result 12
when policies are implemented that alter the market
equilibrium.
o Introduction to Public Finance: discuss government responses to
market failures of public goods, external costs and benefits, and
imperfect competition and how these responses have the
potential to reduce deadweight loss. Discuss ways in which
government may redistribute income
Total 60
Books Recommended
• Mankiw, N. G. (2007), Economics: Principles and Applications, 4th edition, India edition by
South-Western, a part of Cengage Learning, Cengage Learning India Private Limited, ISBN-
13:978-81-315-0577-9 (hereafter Mankiw, 2007, 4e).
• Karl E. Case and Ray C. Fair (2007). Principles of Economics, 8 th edition, Pearson Education Inc.,
ISBN 81-317-1587-6. (Hereafter Case & Fair, 2007, 8e).
• Stiglitz, J.E and Carl E. Walsh (2006), Economics, International Student Edition, 4 th Edition,
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, ISBN 0-393-92622-2. (Hereafter Stiglitz & Walsh,
2006, 4e).
• Harold Craig Petersen, W. Cris Lewis, Macmillan, 1986. Managerial Economics
• Salvatore, D. Microeconomics: Theory and Applications. Oxford University Press.
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• Modern Microeconomics 2e ,Koutsoyiannis 2nd Revised edition. Macmillan.
• Rittenberg, Libby, and Timothy Tregarthen, Principles of Microeconomics, Flat World
Knowledge, 2009. ISBN: 9780982043035 . This Creative Commons-licensed online text offers
free web viewing. Link to online book:
http://catalog.flatworldknowledge.com/catalog/editions/p2147. Hand-outs of relevant
chapters are provided in class.
• Software: The course requires use of Microsoft Excel, Google Spread sheets or any other open
source spread sheet tool for problem solving and analyses.
• Suggested Evaluation Methods:
• As per SIU Rules on Pg. no. 20 – 5.1 e) III.
•
• Parallel/Similar courses the existing curriculum:
S.No. Name of the course Institute where it was offered
1 Economics ( Law Faculty ) SLS
2 Principles of Economics Symbiosis School for Economics
Name of Ms. Pallavi Ms. Ishita
Member Tak Rai Ghosh
Designation Asst. Prof. Asst. Prof.
Org. / Inst. SSE SSE
Signature
Name of the Expert:
Signature: Date:
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