Microeconomic Principles (ECN295-02) Syllabus New Economics Paradigm New Economics Paradigm Website Website - http://byrned.faculty.udmercy.edu/ http://byrned.faculty.udmercy.edu/ Page 1 of 10 Instructor: Edward T. Derbin Phone: 586-871-3224 E-mail: derbined@udmercy.edu (use the UDM email address, but if you have trouble, you can always contact me at my home address: edtitan@aol.com ) Location: Course meets in Briggs 348 on Tuesdays: 6.40- 9.10P Office Hours: 6:00 PM to 6:30 PM, Briggs 313 (I might be in Dr. Byrne’s office at Briggs 319) on Tuesdays and Thursdays (call/email me to set up a meeting) COURSE NUMBER AND NAME: ECN295-02 Microeconomic Principles Course Description Economics is the study of scarcity. A society cannot have all the goods and services it desires. It must make a number of decisions because of this. What should it produce or what is often termed, guns or butter. How should it produce those goods and services in terms of labor, capital and other resources? Who gets the goods and services once they are produced? Technically, these decisions are called the output mix, the input mix and the income distribution. The branch of Economics that addresses these issues of decision making is called Microeconomics or Micro for short. How many cars will be produced? How labor intensive should be bread-making or house-building? Will the resulting income distribution be more or less equally distributed? Additionally, the relationship of nations to each other is considered. This is usually referred to as international trade. The course that follows this course (ECN 295) is called Principles of Macroeconomics (ECN 296) or Macro for short. It examines scarcity in an overall sense. What causes recessions and the resultant higher levels of scarcity than ought to occur. Why does inflation occur with its resulting redistribution of income and a change in relative scarcity? Why do some economies grow faster and provide the potential for alleviating scarcity more rapidly and why do some economies languish in very slow growth rates with little change in the standard of living for long periods of time? These are very important questions but we must wait until next semester to address them.