Introduction to Economic Analysis
Fall 2016
Jeffrey Parker, Reed College
Assignments
Cases of the Day
- August 31: Trust in economic transactions
- September 2: Markets, scalpers, and queues
- September 9: Elasticity of demand for higher education
- September 12: Counterintuitive behavior of prices of seasonal goods
- September 16: Measuring utility
- September 19: Oil prices and consumer demand
- September 23 and 26: Production and costs in dairy farming
- September 30: Washington state sales tax and interstate competition in retailing
- October 5: New York City Ice Trust
- October 7: Price discrimination in higher education
- October 10: The global lysine price-fixing conspiracy
- October 14: Dairy farming from the input side
- October 24: The education premium in wages
- October 28: Tracing the effects of the oil embargo
- October 31: The Grand Banks fishery
- November 4: Appropriability and the incentives for innovation
- November 7: Okun's Leaky Bucket
- November 11: The Great Depression
- November 14: Macroeconomics and happiness
- November 16: Information technology and productivity
- November 18: Mortgage-backed securities and the allocation of risk
- November 21: Unemployment in Slovakia
- December 2: U.S. disinflation in 1979-82
- December 5: Monetary and fiscal policies in 2008-13
Homework Assignments
- Problem Set #1 (due Wednesday, September 7)
- Problem Set #2: Double-oral market analysis (due Wednesday, September 14)
- Problem Set #3 (due Wednesday, September 21)
- Problem Set #4 (due Wednesday, September 28) is the dairy-farms case above
- Problem Set #5 (due Wednesday, October 12)
- Economic Naturalist Assignment (due Wednesday, October 26)
- Problem Set #6 (due Wednesday, November 2)
- Problem Set #7 (due Wednesday, November 23)
- Problem Set #8 (due Wednesday, November 30)
- Information about Group Research Project
- Group assignments for Group Research Project