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.

Main Body

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.

Exercises for practice for first exam:

  1. Chapter 1

    • self-check questions 1-5
    • review questions 10, 11, 13, 16-18
    • critical thinking questions 20-22, 25-27

  2. Chapter 2

    • self-check questions and review questions
    • critical thinking questions 21-23
    • all problems

  3. Chapter 3: all self-check, review, critical thinking questions and the problems

  4. Chapter 4: all self-check, review, critical thinking questions and the problems

  5. Chapter 5: 1-2, 10-18, 25-29, 33-40

Course Diary

2025-02-27

  1. Definition, calculation, interpretation of elasticity
  2. Problem solving

2025-02-24

  1. Financial capital markets
  2. Prices as information

2025-02-20

  1. Taxes
  2. Work on project

2025-02-17

Exam 1 coverage: Chapters 1 to 3 and Section 4.1

2025-02-13

Review session: pre-recordings of practice exercises and how to solve them

2025-02-10

  1. Working on exercises from Meeting 08
  2. More practice exercises

2025-02-06

  1. Why do supply curves slope upward?
  2. Applying supply and demand curves when there are multiple economic changes
  3. Why is market equilibrium really so special?
  4. Consequences of interventions based on quantities and prices
  5. Consequences of introducing minimum wages

2025-02-03

  1. Is the demand and supply model a reasonable model to use?

  2. Understanding market demand from scratch and through market research

    • one possible explanation as to why demand curves slope downward
    • market research is difficult: participation, consistency in preferences, privacy concerns

  3. Another explanation why demand curves slope down using the ideas from Chapters 1 and 2 only

    • Understanding the meaning of price in the demand-supply model
    • What happens to the budget line if relative prices change?
    • “Actions speak louder than words” shown via the weak axiom fo revealed preference

2025-01-30

  1. Link to Martha Olney’s video
  2. Applying the four-step process to a real-life example
  3. Working on consequences of a minimum wage

2025-01-27

  1. Wrapped up Chapters 1 and 2
  2. Worked on some practice exercises

2025-01-23

  1. Wrap up circular flow diagram
  2. Shapes and positions of budget lines
  3. How do consumers make choices among many bundles of goods (a preview)
  4. Building the production possibilities frontier more organically

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