- Do you want to understand how markets work, how do they accomplish their goals and what are their limitations?

If yes, take this completely free online course, Principles of Microeconomics, and get answers to all of the above mentioned questions. We make tens of economic decisions every day, what to buy, what to eat, what to study, whether to work or play. All of our decisions are influenced by the situation prevailing in the markets, especially the prices of goods and services. Even investors respond to markets all the time; markets signal where they should invest their money, which goods should they produce more, what prices they should set to maximize their profits. In short, economics is all around us.

If you want to understand how do the markets work, take this course, which primarily focuses on microeconomic theory of markets. This course will explore what outcomes do the markets generate when working at their full capacity, following the basic principles of microeconomic. It will also discuss what consequences markets can face when they do not work well. The case of government intervention in perfectly competitive markets will also be discussed, taking examples from everyday life. In the weekly exercises, microeconomic theory will be applied to current economic issues and policy debates.

Course Syllabus

- Week One: Where do markets come from and how can they efficiently allocate limited resources to fulfil unlimited demands of consumers?
- Week Two: The Basic Supply and Demand model, Introduction to the concept of elasticity and effects of income and price changes on market outcomes.
- Week Three: The case of government intervention.
- Week Four: Understanding firm’s decision making process, how do firms maximize their profits
- Week Five: The Perfectly Competitive Market
- Week Six and Seven: What is Monopoly? Different types of monopoly, Monopolistic competition and the case of government intervention in monopolistic markets
- Week Eight: When markets fail: externalities and public good.
- Week Nine: Understanding poverty and inequality

Author Bio

Rebecca Stein is a senior lecturer of economics at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches introduction to microeconomics to over thousand students every year.