Welcome to the course webpage of COBECON (Term 2 AY 2024-2025 version)!

Frontmatter

In a nutshell

This is the webpage for an undergraduate course called Introduction to Microeconomics (COBECON), specifically offered to non-economics majors.

Hit Refresh on your browser to get the latest version of the webpage.

Information about using the materials

If you want to use my slides or the materials in this webpage, please abide by the license:

Lecture Slides on Introduction to Microeconomics (Term 2 AY 2024-2025 Version) © 2025 by Andrew Adrian Yu Pua is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

To cite the slides, please use

Pua, A. A. Y. (2025). Lecture Slides for Introduction to Microeconomics [Quarto slides]. https://cobecon.neocities.org

Finding typos or unclear portions

If you find typos or unclear portions in the notes and materials, please let me know. I will be monitoring your contributions during the term and I will acknowledge you in these notes. If you make substantial contributions, I will treat you to some non-alcoholic drinks at Auro Cafe located near the Brother Andrew Gonzalez Hall of De La Salle University.

Resources on time management, learning to learn, and the illusion of learning

I would ask you to take an opportunity to reexamine how you learn and study things. It does not matter if your motivation is only to pass the exam or something greater.

I have found the following resources to be helpful to students I have taught in the past. Of course, I am not sure if it would work for you, but do keep an open mind.

• On Shortification of “Learning” from one of the co-founders of OpenAI
• Effective study strategies for students
• Time management for students
• My Learning Journal, admittedly for teens, but may work for you: PDF
• Top 10 ideas to help your learning and top 10 pitfalls: PDF
• Test preparation checklist: PDF
• Coursera online course on “Learning How to Learn”

Main Body

Links to the slides and notes

Meeting 04: Production possibilities

Meeting 03: Scarcity outside the personal/individual setting (face-to-face, everything on blackboard)

Meeting 02: How do economists think of scarcity and how do we present this visually? K33 notes, K34 notes

Meeting 01: Introduction to the course

Textbook examples and exercises for practice

Our main textbook is

Shapiro, D., MacDonald, D., and Greenlaw, S. A. (2022). Principles of Microeconomics (Third Edition). Retrieved from https://openstax.org/details/books/principles-microeconomics-3e.

Course Diary

2025-01-23

2025-01-20

1. Dealt with unanswered questions from independent learning activities

   1. Applied the idea behind budget lines to the case of products of an organization
   2. Applied the idea behind budget lines to the costs of education

2. Demonstrated different versions of exam questions and discussed how best to answer them

3. Circular flow diagram and mutually beneficial exchanges

   1. Mutually beneficial can be facilitated or blocked by law.
   2. Imagine the situation where the household and the firm will just be one person.

4. Seinfeld clip on cigars

2025-01-16

1. Important terms which underlie the graphs of Chapter 2: Scarcity, fungibility, opportunity cost
2. Main picture: (a) Consumption opportunity set or budget set (b) Consumption opportunity frontier or budget constraint or budget line
3. Review of high school algebra related to lines and the defining feature of lines, which is constant slope
4. Different ways of writing a slope

2025-01-09 and 2025-01-13

Classes were called off. Provost ordered the release of independent learning activities for 2025-01-13. Refer to your emails as to what these learning activities are.

2025-01-06

1. Introduced myself, yourselves, and a bit about the course
2. Economics through the decisions I have made
3. Economics through the weekly schedule you have designed