Spring 2001

Professor Julian Betts

This course covers intermediate microeconomics, with an emphasis on types of markets, regulation, decision-making and negotiating under conditions of uncertainty. It covers the content in a fairly quantitative way, but we will also study numerous “real-world” applications during the course.

Prerequisites: Economics 1A-B or 2A-B, Math 20A-B-C, and Economics 170A. (We will frequently use calculus during the course.)

Textbook: Managerial Economics, Third Edition by William F. Samuelson and Stephen G. Marks, Dryden Press, 1999.

Also: Study Guide to Accompany Managerial Economics, Third Edition, by John Dodge, William F. Samuelson and Stephen G. Marks, Dryden Press, 1999.

We will begin in the first week by reviewing Chapters 8 and 9 (perfect competition and monopoly), and then in later weeks we will cover Chapter 10 (oligopoly) followed by chapters 11-17 (if we have no time we will skip 17) and 19.

Grading:

Test 1 (in class Thursday April 19, covering chapters 8-10) 15%

Test 2 (in class Thursday May 24, covering chapters 11-14) 25%

Final exam (covering entire course, with emphasis on new

material after Chapter 14) 60%

Note: There will be no lecture Tuesday May 15.

Letter Grades

Letter grades will be determined by final % in the course, as follows: 90-100=A+, 85-89=A, 80-84=A-, 75-79=B+, 70-74=B, 66-69=B-, 62-65=C+, 58-61=C, 54-57=C-, 50-53=D, <50% = F.

Teaching Assistants and Office Hours

My office hours are Wednesday 10-11:30 AM Room 212, Department of Economics. You can also reach me at jbetts@ucsd.edu. If you do use email, please make sure that “170B” is in the message title so that I can organize my course-related email easily.

There will be one or more teaching assistants for this course. I will announce their names and office hours shortly. They will tend to bunch their office hours towards exam times.

If there is one piece of advice I can give you it would be this: to succeed in this course, don’t learn passively. Attempt all the problems that I hand out in class and work through the study guide and sample problems in the text!!