Microeconomics Plan for March 17

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We started down the path of understanding monopoly power yesterday, and hopefully activity 34 was relatively painless. The notes from yesterday are here, although my smart board notes do not include graphs. One of you will have to offer yours up to me so I can post them.

At the end of class yesterday we were talking about the power of monopolistic firms (and to some extent monopolistically competitive firms) to engage in a practice called price discrimination. We also said at the end of class yesterday that monopolies can also be subjected to regulations by government in order to achieve socially optimum output (productive efficiency) and socially optimum price (allocative efficiency). We'll go into a little more depth about what those ideas and concepts are today and you will complete Activity 36 for homework for our block tomorrow. I've included 36 and 37 in the pdf, and we'll be doing this for Friday.

Class notes from today are here.

These activities will probably take you a full 45 minutes, so don't wait until the absolute last minute to get them done.

Economic Indicators Book

For research to help with your grades and as a good resource, I've included the link to the Secrets of Economic Indicators book in the link above.

This is a great resource for interpreting the plethora of economic data that can be used to measure how well our economic system is attempting to achieve the broad social goals of economic freedom, economic security, economic equity, economic growth, and economic efficiency.

As you all are filling out the worksheet and assigning grades, I'd ask you, too, to consider your grading criteria. Are you grading the US against its potential? Or, are you giving the US its grade in comparison to other countries?

Microeconomics Plan- Week of November 17

As always, the assignment sheet for the week is posted at the link above.

We're going to be looking at imperfect factor markets for the rest of the week, and hopefully this site will not have the same problems this week that we had last week. My wife informed me that she lots of mp3's and videos "buried" on the site and that may have been slowing things down...

This week will be the final week of Factor Markets, and as you work through Activity 47 this evening and Activity 49 for the block period on Wednesday or Thursday, keep your eyes on Activity 51 which is the end of unit review activity on Factor Markets. In fact, if you're using your 30-45 minutes of homework time wisely this week, scan through Activity 51 for Friday to see which of those questions you can answer from the other activities.

Beginning next week, we're going to look at the role of government, and I confess to a curiosity about your answers to the blog assignment for next Monday. I realize that this is a normative question, but I do want to know which of those things listed are public goods in your respective minds.

Finally, I've posted last week's class notes. They're my notes from the smart board. Sorry scribes. I'll get yours up, too-- when I get a chance.

Perfect Competition v. Monopoly

I've posted today's notes at the link above. They're not as colorful as what we have on the board, so I encourage you to use color and color in where appropriate...

Keep in mind that firms could behave like perfect competitors which would be the socially optimal outcome. If left to their own profit-maximizing devices, though, they will not behave this way and they will underproduce with respect to the socially optimal output, and they will overcharge with respect to the socially optimal price.

Social optimums are the points where P = ATC = MR = MC... our "happy place." Market power prevents markets from finding their happy places. Be sure to read the Adam Smith chapter I sent you by email last Thursday for a verbal explanation of the phenomenon described in our graphs.

Market Structures and Quiz Review

The link above will take you to the audio and video files which review Friday's quiz and start us through our charts and graphs on market structures.

The information we'll be looking at the next three weeks is HUGE and helps us have a deeper understanding of how firms operate and also de-bunks some common myths about economics and firm behavior-- such as the myth that if the firm just sells more, it will be better off.

Firms look to maximize profit and they do this by producing where Marginal Benefit equals marginal costs. They can make profits as long as Marginal Benefit is greater than Marginal Cost, but they MAXIMIZE where MR = MC. This over-arching rule must NEVER be forgotten or overlooked. We're taking a deductive approach to this where we learn all the big overarching stuff first and we'll fill in the blanks, but keep the big picture in mind.

Get to work on those "flash cards" and we'll post our own set here tomorrow.

Macroeconomics Plan for the Week of September 22

It's test week, so you're only written assignment for this week is to complete Activity 18 for this evening.

We're finishing up our conversation about business cycles today and doing an activity related to them. I've also posted Friday's notes.

I'd also like you to do a blog on the Vice Presidential Debate on Thursday night. Please keep your blog focused on the issues that the candidates raise and the likely impact of their fiscal policy proposals on economic growth, the labor market, and price stability. Leave the personal attacks to the candidates and the media.

Keep what they and you have to say in mind, too, as you read Krugman's Chapter 12 on Fiscal Policy as well.

Soon, I'll be asking you to think about different economic philosophies and wondering if we've all become Keynesians...

Graphing the President's Address to the Nation

I've posted my Board Notes from the President's address.

In both classes, we struggled to grasp the general elasticity of the individual markets addressed that were and will be directly affected. Remember elasticity measures movements ALONG a demand or a supply curve, not movements of the curve. Or, another way of saying and describing this should be that "Quantity Supplied" is elastic or inelastic and "Quantity Demanded" is elastic or inelastic. A curve shows quantities supplied or demanded at given prices.

Remember, too, gang, that as prices move demand tends to become more elastic. We could make the case, then, that in the housing market, we moved to the more elastic portion of the demand curve at the higher prices caused by a rightward shift in the demand curve.

These are difficult times, and you may be right that people of all political stripes should think about economic fundamentals like supply, demand, and elasticity before talking about their policy plans to make America a better place. After all, the law of unintended consequences is a pretty powerful one. Look at our college tuition market...

Microeconomics Notes from Week of 9/22

I'm posting two pdfs below. The first is Laura's scribe notes from Wednesday's block and the second is my notebook notes from B period today. If you look at both, you'll get a pretty good sense of Consumer and Producer Surplus, Deadweight Loss and Elasticity.

Our quiz tomorrow will be a little different. We're going to be very topical and we're going to watch President Bush's speech from last night and graph it. The link takes you a text version, but you can watch the video from there as well. We'll be watching and graphing, but if you watch it tonight, it might help you tomorrow.

Here are the notes files:


Class_Notes_9_24_A.pdf

Class_Notes_9_25_B.pdf

Macroeconomics Notes from The Week of September 22

I've consolidated the notes and answer sheets to our homework into one pdf file which is below.

Class_Notes_week_of_9_22.pdf

Any of this stuff is fair game for the quiz tomorrow, and if you haven't read either of the texts, tonight might be a good time to do that. In Krugman, it's Chapters 6 and 7, and Bernanke, it's chapters 17-19.

AP MACROECONOMICS plan for Week of September 22

Happy Homecoming week to the MACRO class as well...

We're learning more about Macroeconomics: The Big Picture, and learning in more depth about these bigger issues and bigger metrics through which we measure the economic health of our nation.

I've posted my notes from late last week below:

CPI_basics_Notes.pdf

After our "Royalty for a Day" Game in class, you're going to complete Activity 15 which is the last page of what I posted last week. In this assignment, you're going to look at who is helped and who is hurt when there are unanticipated inflationary pressures in the economy.

Activities_9_15.pdf

And for tomorrow night for Thursday, you are going to print and complete Activity 16 on Types of Unemployment:

Activity_16.pdf

AP MICROECONOMICS plan for the Week of September 22

Happy Homecoming week...

Lots of good blogs over the weekend on Ike from the Micro classes and whether or not we are in a recession from the Macro class. We have some organizational issues when we all try to blog at once, so I think for the assignments that I'd like you to do as they relate to the debate on Friday night, I'd like you to write those as comments to what I post on Friday night/Saturday morning in response. That should help us keep this digital space a little better organized and a little better delineation between the Micro class and the Macro class.

I'm posting my notes on elasticity below:

Elasticity_Notes.pdf

For this evening, you're doing the Cabrini Green Quiz that I handed out in class and emailed you and Activity 18 which is below:

Activity_18.pdf

And for tomorrow evening, you are PRINTING AND COMPLETING Activity 17 which involves math without a calculator for our block periods on Wednesday and Thursday.

Activity_17.pdf

Macroeconomics Notes and Resources for September 16 and 18

We've spent the week talking about the big macroeconomic picture and there's a lot of news and information out there about "the economy" right now. It's more than just the stock market or the financial markets that make this economy tick.

The notes from the last couple of days are below, as are the links to the CIA information we looked at in class and the information from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Macro_9_15_9_18.pdf

and

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2001rank.html


and

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html

These are indeed trying times, and I'd like you to consider over the weekend whether or not you think the economy is in a recession, headed for a recession, or headed out of a recession. It's a tough question and lots of folks have different views on the topic. I'd like you to consider all the information you see before you jump to a conclusion, but I'd like you to weigh in in this space on where YOU think we are and where we're headed, and what, if anything, regulators or government can do to change the course.

Microeconomics Class Notes from September 15

Seniors, I apologize for a bit of a rehash of what we did in Senior Seminar on supply and demand, but I promise you that we only scratched the surface there. I hope as you were doing the exercises in activities 10 and 13, you knew enough that this was relatively easy.

In the interim, here are the notes from today:


A_9_15.pdf and
B_9_15.pdf

For the underclassmen and those of you in other sections, I'm also including the link to what I did in Sr. Seminar as well:

http://seniorseminarwedge08.wikispaces.com/space/showimage/Econ_Lecture_9_8.pdf

Class Notes and revised assignment plan

Great first block periods yesterday and today. I may have overestimated what I could get through, and for that I apologize. Class notes are posted below:


Class_Notes_9_3_9_4.pdf

For tomorrow, the Circular Flow activity doesn't make sense, so you're completing Activity 6, for which the link is below:

Activity_6.pdf

We'll have our weekly quiz tomorrow which will have a five multiple choice questions and one Free Response Question involving Production Possibilities.

Class Notes for September 2

Class notes are below. Note that the second O and the I are different between Micro and Macro. Great jobs, Emily K., Parker, and Conor.


Class_Notes_9_2.pdf

As your working through tonight's assignment, be sure to be thinking about questions that could be asked about points inside and outside those lines.

Notes from Friday, August 29

Notes from Friday have been scanned and are posted below. I'm throwing you all a little change up since all three classes are still covering roughly the same material, so I'm posting them as one combined file.

Scribes, there is some good work here, so future scribes, keep up the good work.

Class_Notes_8_29.pdf