St. Gregory's University
Division Course Syllabus

GRADE:
Four (4) hour tests will be given for a total of 400 points.  Ten (10) pop quizzes will be given for a total 100 points.

COURSE RATIONALE:
This course is designed to develop the student's ability and understand microeconomics principles involving the functioning of the price system; the study and analysis of market structures; the issues of government policy, the public sector and the market economy; the understanding of resources markets; and an examination of international economic interdependence.

COURSE GOALS:
Upon successful completion of this course the students should be able to:
 

1.  Understand the concept of economic markets and the price system.
2.  Develop the concepts of demand and supply and explain how they combine to produce equilibrium prices.
3.  Apply the concept the elasticity to demand and supply as well as to the determinates of demand other than price.
4.  Understanding production and cost theory from the perspective of short and long run supply analysis.
5.  Understand the concept of market structure and describe the characteristics and operations of perfect competition, monopoly, monopolistic competition, and oligopoly.
6.  Understand how consumers and producers behave in the real world under conditions of imperfect knowledge and imperfect information.
7.  Know what is the public interest in economic affairs and why government intervenes in business activity.
8.  Understand how resource prices are determined within different market structures and how equilibrium quantities and prices for a resource are achieved.
9.  Understand the functions of the labor market in terms of how labor demand and supply determine equilibrium wages.
10.  Understand the role of time in production and consumption as regards the resource markets of capital, land, and entrepreneurial ability.

Bibliography:

Wall Street Journal
Barron's
Investor's Business Daily
Fortune
Business Week

Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nation.  New York:  The Modern Library, 1937.

Turner, Frederick Jackson.  The Frontier in American History. New York:  Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962.

Weber, Max.  The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York:  Scribner's, 1958.

Schedule: