Monash University Handbook 2010 Postgraduate - Unit

Synopsis

The behaviour of the economy is the result of a host of decisions made each day by millions of people. Prices and markets play a crucial role in economic behaviour, creating a system in which actions of individuals, guided by self-interest and without any central co-ordination or planning, create wealth for society as a whole. How individual workers, households and firms make decisions, and how they interact with each other, is the subject of microeconomics.

Objectives

The learning goals associated with this unit are to:

• understand how markets work, and how prices work to allocate resources
• understand the basic principles of how people make economic decisions, how they interact economically, and how the economy as a whole works
• understand the role of public policy, and the constraints on its operation, when markets fail
• understand how firms are organized and make decisions
• have developed learning skills and begun to acquire the techniques of thinking like an economist
• have sufficient grounding to attempt advanced studies in microeconomics in subsequent years.

Assessment

Within semester assesment: 40%
Examination (2 hours): 60%

Chief examiner(s)

Elias Khalil

Contact hours

3 hours per week

Prohibitions

ECC2000, ETC2000