Lecture Notes and Short Texts in Intermediate Microeconomics

Nicholas Economides' network economics home page, with links to his main papers on the subject including (most useful for teaching) his 'Economics of Networks' review article, interactive bibliography, and links to US anti-trust materials centred on the Department of Justice vs Microsoft case.

A hand-out for a principles/intermediate level course in microeconomics, discussing a method to measure aggregate consumer welfare in a market economy without invoking individual utility functions. It should also prove useful to students of managerial economics who are interested in rigorous analysis.

This blog ran from 2012 to 2015, in which Prof. Arvan answers questions from students about Microeconomics (Principles or Intermediate). Posts are organised by date and by topic.

Fourteen-page booklet, plus references, adapted from Peter Earl & Tim Wakeley (2005) Business Economics: a Contemporary Approach (ISBN 9780077103927).

Lecture outline from a module in intermediate micro.

PowerPoint presentation depicting decision-making under risk, showing how risk attitudes can be examined using choices among lotteries or willingness to pay for insurances. Shows how risk attitudes can be captured in convexity of the indifference curve or strict concavity of the utility function; and how risk aversion can be quantified by the ratio of second and first derivatives of the utility function, implying that it falls as wealth increases.

Archived page from a course taught in 2008. It contains 6 sets of lecture slides covering the demand and supply sides of partial equilibrium analysis, including effects of shifts in demand and supply, price elasticities of demand and supply, short- and long-run changes, efficiency and welfare analysis, impact of taxes and price controls, extension to international trade. Uses clear graphics and simple equations. Also includes a course syllabus, coursework assignments and a sample exam paper.

This complete set of materials for teaching income tax has been used in a second year undergraduate microeconomics course for economics specialists at the London School of Economics. The material could also be used in a public finance course. There are 107 Powerpoint slides, a worked example to support the lecture, a class activity involving student presentations (printable instructions for students and for lecturers) and some assessment questions.

This 134-page PDF file contains notes for slides for the whole of the fifth edition of Varian's textbook on intermediate microeconomics.

Lecture notes on theory of the firm, growth of firms and industry concentration, barriers to entry, product differentiation, welfare effects of monopoly and other industrial topics. Some handwritten; most contain graphical presentation as well as algebra, some accompanied by slides. Linked to 10-week Industrial Economics course at City University, as taught in 2005.

Created to accompany an intermediate microeconomics course, these PDF files include text, equations and graphs, with hyperlinks to help the reader navigate around each of the 13 tutorials. The files also include interactive multiple-choice quizzes. Topics covered include Decisions and Markets, Pricing and Equilibrium and Tradeoffs and Choice. This link is to Archive.org's copy of the site, dating from November 2005.

Note-form PDFs from a 20-lecture graduate-level course delivered in 2004, along with a reading list, two problem sets and a sample exam. From the course description, "Overall, this course focuses on microeconomics, with some topics from macroeconomics and international trade. It emphasizes the integration of theory, data, and judgment in the analysis of corporate decisions and public policy." The main course text is Parkin, "Microeconomics".

This course webpage for Prices and Markets, as taught at Strathclyde University includes sets of lecture slides for the 2003/4 course in PDF, as well as problem sets (short answer and True/False) with answers in a separate file. There are also some sample questions from past exams. The site is no longer online so this link goes to the Web Archive's copy.

Behavioral Economics is a draft of the opening chapter of C Camerer, G Loewenstein and M Rabin (eds)(2003) Advances in Behavioral Economics, Princeton University Press. It covers the main heuristics and judgement biases revealed by psychological experiments and statistical surveys on choice, and the implications for macroeconomics, financial economics, labour economics and other areas where 'rational' choice is traditionally assumes.

This is a large (half-megabyte) PDF file, scanned from 21 pages of typewritten lecture notes, in which Nobel laureate McFadden tells a witty alternative tale of Robinson Crusoe. Walras and Keynes appear on his island to offer advice on the maximisation of happiness and his employment of Man Friday. Indifference curves, production possibility curves and profit maximisation are among the topics addressed.

Ten Excel spreadsheets, each with a worksheet in Microsoft Word format, are held here. Each spreadsheet takes several different inputs from the student and the worksheets give specific guidance on how to use them. Topics are: Working with Lines, Market Equilibrium, Market with tax, Cardinal Utility, Consumer Choice, Income and Substitution Effects, Products and Costs, Competitive Firm, Competitive Industry, and Monopoly.

A dozen sets of bullet-point lecture slides from an MBA course in microeconomic analysis, with some past exercises. Topics are: Creating Value, Added Value in Trade, Monopolistic Markets, Costs of Production to Mass Markets, Pricing to Mass Markets, Pricing with Multiple Buyers and Sellers, Production in Perfectly Competitive Markets, Barriers to Entry and Competition, Game Theory Revisited, Oligopoly, and Review and Extensions to Business Strategy.

This is a course web site from 1999, with links to sites for previous years. It includes problems sets, suggested readings and past exams papers. Topics addressed are: Axiomatic development of utility functions, Axiomatic development of expected utility, Applying expected utility theory, Introduction to Revealed Preference, Consumer Theory Handout, Consumer Theory: Summing Up, and Applied Consumer Theory. All material is in PDF.

This link takes you directly to a PDF file of a Robert Marks chapter on demand. It covers a "theory of market demand from a small number of axioms of rational choice", including a theory of rational choice, utility bundles and indifference curves, constrained maximisation of utility, the Edgeworth Box, individual demand function, comparative statics, including the Slutsky equation and the market demand curve and relevant elasticities.

The Nobel Foundation makes available a great deal of material on each of the Economics prize winners, including video of each Prize Lecture since Robert Mundell in 1999. As well as a lay introduction to each prize winner's research, there are "Advanced information" links giving a more technical explanation. This link is to the Economics Network's quick index of lecture videos and related materials on the site. Each video is a full lecture (usually between 40 and 60 minutes) with good audio and video quality, and pitched at a non-technical audience. Transcripts of each lecture are available.