Microeconomics (EIB-E211)

Fall 2024 · EIB E211 · Tufts University · 3 credits · Undergraduate

Microeconomics does not address every question about the economy, but it does provide tools to answer numerous questions about the choices individuals and firms make. The set of tools microeconomics gives you can be used to solve almost any economic problem an individual person or firm faces. In this course, we will start with theories and models, explanations of how things work that help us understand and predict how and why economic entities (consumers, producers, industries, governments, etc.) behave as they do; we will also cover theories and models that help us understand and predict how competitive, oligopolistic, and monopolistic markets work, as well as situations in which markets might not work well (e.g., asymmetric information, externalities, and public goods). To learn the intricacies of the theories and models, we will use the tools of graphs and mathematics. We then use theories and models to look at how people and firms actually behave in real life (including some seemingly noneconomic situations). The interaction between microeconomic theory and the events, decisions, and empirical data from the real world lies at the heart of microeconomics (Goolsbee, Levitt, and Syverson, 2020). Students are required to be concurrently enrolled in EIB E210M, unless they have passed E210M or the Quantitative Reasoning equivalency exam.

Course codes: EIB-E211

Course Discovery