University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Microeconomics Principles

Taught in English

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176,114 already enrolled

Course

Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals

4.8

(2,935 reviews)

Beginner level

Recommended experience

26 hours to complete
3 weeks at 8 hours a week
Flexible schedule
Learn at your own pace

What you'll learn

  • Identifying hidden costs of anything

Details to know

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Assessments

9 quizzes

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There are 9 modules in this course

You will become familiar with the course, your classmates, and our learning environment. The orientation will also help you obtain the technical skills required for the course.

What's included

1 video4 readings1 quiz1 discussion prompt

Welcome to your first week in Microeconomics Principles! As you will quickly see, the things you learn in this class will probably help you see the world in a different way. Economics is not just about money, as you may have incorrectly assumed. On the contrary, as you will learn in this lesson, economics is about how society distributes scarce resources. And, since almost anything in the world is a scarce resource, from fossil fuels to suitable romantic partners, we can apply the rules of economics to pretty much anything.

What's included

6 videos1 reading1 quiz1 discussion prompt

Welcome to your second week in Microeconomics Principles! This module we will cover the hallmark framework of the field: the supply and demand model. I am sure that if you knew any economics words before enrolling in this course those two words were supply and demand. This module you will finally learn what all the fuss is about.

What's included

17 videos1 reading1 quiz1 discussion prompt

Welcome to Week 3! Last module we introduced the supply and demand model to explain how free markets work. One of the main concepts we learned about free markets was that they tend to gravitate toward an “equilibrium” price and quantity. This module we will use the same conceptual model to answer one important question: Are free markets the best way to distribute society’s resources?

What's included

10 videos1 reading1 quiz1 discussion prompt

Welcome to the fourth week! This module we will cover one of my favorite economics concepts: elasticity. It is one of my favorites because of how useful it is to analyze policy implications, as well as its usefulness for business managers. This will be obvious to you when you read one of the discussion topics for this module: Should we legalize marijuana?

What's included

14 videos1 reading1 quiz1 discussion prompt

Welcome to your fifth week! This module we will begin covering the theory of the firm, which will take us basically three modules to finish. Economists call this section of the course, "The Economics of the Lemonade Stand." And that title makes perfect sense, since the concepts we cover can be used by anyone, from someone owning a lemonade stand, to a car manufacturing company, to a hair salon, to a burrito stand, etc.

What's included

9 videos1 reading1 quiz1 discussion prompt

Welcome to your sixth week! This module we continue our discussion of the firm by focusing on those firms working in a perfectly competitive (or competitive) environment.

What's included

10 videos1 reading1 quiz1 discussion prompt

So, why is it that when you fly the person sitting next to you in the plane probably paid a different price for the ticket than what you paid for it? And why does Starbucks charge so much for its coffee even though you can buy coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts for almost half of that price? This module we are finishing our discussion of the firm by focusing on cases that should be more familiar to you than the perfect competition examples we have been using.

What's included

10 videos1 reading1 quiz1 discussion prompt

And so we have arrived at the last week. This course has gone too fast! This module we will be discussing market failures. A market failure is a situation when the market does not do a good job of distributing resources among members of society. In fact, in all of these cases the market IS the problem.

What's included

13 videos1 reading1 quiz2 discussion prompts

Instructor

Instructor ratings
4.8 (690 ratings)
Dr. José J. Vázquez-Cognet
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
1 Course176,114 learners

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