OBJECTIVE
This course is designed with two main goals in
mind.
1. The primary purpose of the course is to provide a sufficient understanding of the fundamental principles of economics. This includes propositions about individual behavior, costs, output of firms, equilibrium, market structure, the organization of economic activity, and basic economic reasoning. Given this knowledge, a student should be able to handle further courses in economics or at least understand economic issues found in a newspaper, blog, substack, or reel. This first goal is standard for every principles course.
2. However, I have a second "higher" goal. I want to
convince you that economics is an interesting field of study and
a systematic way of thinking that is fun and powerful. In short,
I don't want to just teach you "about" economics ... I want you
to learn how to think like an economist! By the
end of this course, I'd like all of your friends to say things
like "can't we just watch a movie without you analyzing it
with economic theory!" I will encourage you to apply
economic ideas to a wide variety of real life
applications: from traffic patterns to dating; from
investments to school shootings; from gas prices to Covid
policy. I hope to surprise you, perhaps offend you*, and
ultimately whet your intellectual appetite towards economics. So
keep an open mind!! **
* On being offended.
About once every two years a student becomes so offended by
an application they want to "rip my eyes out." If you do end up
feeling this way, please come by my office and let's chat (or
send me an anonymous gmail) ... that's what a university is for.
The source of this anger is always the confrontation of
the economic "world view" against some other strongly held
"world view". This cannot (and should not!) be avoided,
and the appropriate question we should always ask is "which
world view is the correct one?" (or better, "which is the false
one?").
Maybe I don't have to convince you of the economic world view.
Maybe you're already a natural
born economist only in need of some direction.
** On having an open mind and academic
freedom.
I am a firm believer in the University
of Chicago Statement on Freedom of Expression. I
also agree with SFU President Joy Johnson when she shared the
following:
"Universities are
comprised of thousands of students, faculty and staff who all
hold unique opinions and views, informed by their scholarly
work and lived experiences. I believe that universities need
to be a place where people can freely engage in academic
inquiry, share ideas, learn from each other, disagree
constructively and peacefully protest. ...
Academic freedom,
as enshrined in our collective agreements and underscored
in What’s Next: The SFU Strategy, creates the
conditions for scholars to freely examine, question, teach
and learn within their area of study, .... To truly live by
our core values of academic freedom and critical thinking,
we need to hold space for difficult and controversial
conversations to take place responsibly and respectfully, as
well as defending and protecting the human right to express
views within the bounds of the law."
If you are not a believer in academic freedom and
can't handle being exposed to alternative theories of human
behavior, then this is not the course for you. Indeed, you're
probably not ready for a university education.
TEXTS
While you wait for the book to arrive, you can read the first four chapters here.
I've also assigned
the short book Candide, by Voltaire.
Read it now for fun, and then you can read it again later in the
course for the last assignment. There will be a question on the
final exam based on Candide.
You can buy Candide online if you want a hard copy,
or just use this
free pdf version.
Lecture Recordings
If you miss a lecture for some reason you can go here for an
audio recording: Lecture
Recording
If you do miss a class, please do not ask for my
slides.
Lecture Attendance
In the old days, before the
pandemic, it would never have occurred to me that I should
tell students of the benefits of lecture attendance. Almost
every student attended!
In the past six years, in this
class, across the university, and indeed, across universities
in North America, there has been a steady decline in lecture
attendance. In this course, over the 2025/26 year, on
some days as many as 60% of students were not in class.
I will discuss the reasons and consequences of this in class.
Here I only want to say that I
will not aid students who do not come. I will not share
my slides, I will not use canvas, and I will assign some marks
for tutorial attendance. It is critical to attend lectures,
and I expect you to be there.
EXAMS
There will be ONE
regular midterm exam initially worth 35% of your final mark. The
final is worth 45%. The regular midterm is "forgivable", so if
you miss it or do poorly, the weight of that exam will transfer
to the final; that is, your final will count for 80%. This is a
bit of insurance for you, but remember, the final exam is
cumulative and usually more difficult.
University policies S10.01 and T20.02, state the
following:
Final
Examinations
Students
are expected to remain available for the entire final
examination period published in the Academic Calendar.
Travel, employment, and other personal commitments should be
planned accordingly. Such commitments do not normally
constitute grounds for alternative examination arrangements.
Both the university and department are clamping down on
missed final exams due to travel or other non-emergency
reasons. Please do not make plans that would take you
away from campus until you know your exam schedule.
END OF CHAPTER PROBLEMS
I have designed this course around the problem sets, and it
is critical that you work on them. The problems in your
book are likely unlike anything you've ever encountered. This is
because they are designed to make you think. There are no
"what's on p. 82?" questions. You might find them
frustrating at first, but hang in there and keep at it.
Due to the (mis)use of AI, there are no weekly problem sets
that count towards your grade. This is unfortunate because
I can no longer "force you" to work on them.
However, you must recognize that DOING PROBLEMS is the
BEST way to learn economics and succeed in this course. Every
week you should do at least 10 problems from the relevant
chapter.
Here are my recommendations for how to succeed in this
course through the use of end of chapter problems
1. Every week do as many odd-numbered problems on your own
as you can handle. Sit quietly, think about the problem,
slowly write out an answer. Then check your answer with the
answer key. If you're not coming close, go back and read
the chapter material. Keep going with the problems in a chapter
until you think you have a decent understanding.
2. I STRONGLY encourage you to form study groups of 2-4
people. Every week you should assign the group 3-4 random
EVEN numbered questions from the relevant chapter that are not
provided with an answer. Work on the questions alone, and
then come together to discuss your ideas.
3. To help you develop your own "economic way of thinking" and
to give you some suggestions for solving problems in the book,
this link
gives you access to 22 short videos. Ten videos discuss
particular "intuitive" questions, while the rest involve solving
quantitative questions. Please, use these videos as
a guide to help you solve other problems that you've never seen
before. Do no use them as
a substitute for working on new problems on your own or avoiding
working with others.
On the midterm and the final exam I will mostly ask you to
solve problems you've never seen before.
Therefore, don't memorize answers! Memorize the theory that's
being used to arrive at the answer so that you can apply that
theory to a new problem.
TUTORIALS: QUIZZES, ATTENDANCE, PARTICIPATION
Your TA will assign 20% of your marks for this
course. (To avoid differences in marking, the marks across
tutorials will be normalized).
10% of your mark will come from (almost) weekly
quizzes. The quizzes will start in week 3 and run for the
rest of the course except the week of the midterm. Each quiz
will be short (1 or 2 questions), and will be short answer
questions similar to the problems at the back of each
chapter. The quizzes are designed so that if you do
problems on your own during the week you should be able to do
the quiz.
5% of your mark will come from attendance.
Attendance in tutorial is MANDATORY. Each tutorial that is
missed reduces the attendance mark by 1%.
5% of your mark is based on your positive
participation in class.
Your TA will elaborate on these details in the first
tutorial.
GRADES
Students always ask: "will the grades be based on a curve?" I suppose they mean, "will there be a fixed number of A's, B's, etc." The answer to this second question is "yes and no." This is a large class. I know from experience that there will be a wide range of marks by the time we reach the end of the course. Some students, remarkably, will end up in the high 90's. Others, just as remarkably, will get below 10. The rest of the class will fall in between.COMMUNICATION
You are welcome to come by my office during office hours to ask
me anything related to the course. Indeed, if you just have
a quick question you can drop by anytime. Often students find
sending emails better, and this is also fine with me. I want
to be a resource for you, so whatever method works for you, works
for me.
You will find that I often send out blanket responses to the
class when I think the answer to a question might be valuable to
everyone. I will also send emails out to the class announcing
various things during the semester either related to the course or
campus life. So ... you
should check your SFU email account regularly. When you
email me, please use your sfu account, otherwise my filter might
not let it through.
There may be times when you want to contact me anonymously.
Perhaps you're critical of some aspect of the course and think
I'll be offended (I won't). Whatever the reason, please feel
free to create an anonymous gmail account and send your concern to
me that way. Don't be offended if I reply though! At
the end of the day I want you to understand the model.
I'm an easy going guy, but if you cheat in my class ... I will hunt you down and not rest until you are punished appropriately.
It always amazes me that a first year student thinks they can cheat in my class and get away with it. Most of you are not a cheaters; that's not how you got here and not who you are. So, if you try to cheat you'll be an amateur at it. I have taught this class since 1982, and I have either sat on or been the Chair of SFU's Senate Committee on Disciplinary Appeals for over 15 years (our "supreme court for hearing cheating cases). After years of experience, I think I've seen every cheating trick and I have several tricks of my own to catch people cheating. I am a professional at catching cheaters. So, my message to you ... the amateur cheater ... is don't even think about it.I should also point out that, according to SFU, violation of copyright and unauthorized sharing of copyright material is considered academic misconduct. It is unauthorized for you to share the textbook file or link, or to upload the book to any public site. If you do so and are caught, it will be treated as equivalent to cheating on an exam.
If you are unfamiliar with SFU's policy on academic conduct, please read this.
HOW
CAN I DO WELL IN THIS COURSE?
Someone recently wrote the following on Rate My Professor:
"For a 100 level Econ course his tests were way to hard, as
understanding concepts and applications mean nothing if you can't
look at a random situation and give the exact answer he wants!
"
I often hear students say "I know the material, I just can't
apply it." What they do not understand is that the ability
to apply an idea is the measure of how well you
understand it. Indeed, it is university policy that grades
are to be determined based on a student's demonstrable
knowledge!
And this is how it should be. If you learned and memorized in
class that 1 apple + 1 apple = 2 apples, but then went to the
grocery store where you were completely stumped by 1 orange
+ 1 orange = ???, then despite your memorizing you didn't
understand the theory of addition.
The same holds for this course. You can memorize an elasticity
formula, but if you can't use it when I change the example from
apples to oranges, you don't understand the concept.
SO, what strategies are you going to use to learn how to actually
USE the ideas in this class?
1. Do problems and then
... more problems. Your book is full of
questions. Do them all ... on your own. Check your
answers with others. Talk to your study partners. Practice, practice, practice. And start
in the first week, don't wait until exam time.
2. Take smart notes. I challenge you to bring just a single sheet of additional paper to class. With this, just take the bare minimum of notes. No color pens! At the end of class, your sheet should be just chicken scratch. Just get the critical points. THEN, THAT DAY, write out a nice set of notes from the class, using your memory, outline, and small notes. Elaborate, explain, and use more than one color on the graphs. By the end of the semester you'll have wonderful notes that will help in future classes. You'll also have no need to study for the exam. It takes a little bit of work each day, but in the end the payoffs are enormous. The way most students take notes is a waste of time. I have found that students who use laptops in class have the worst notes. This course is very graph intensive, and you simply cannot graph fast enough with a computer. Please leave your laptop at home. It is fine to use an ipad or tablet, but make sure you still expand them into your own words after class.
3. Understand ...
don't memorize. Most of you are just out of high
school. You've done a lot of coloring, emoting, and
memorizing. Now it's time to start understanding. Understanding
means you have to think about a concept. It is a skill that takes
practice. You'll know you understand an idea when you can apply it
to a context that is different from the one used to learn it. In
class I'll tell a lot of stories and use examples from popular
culture and the media. If, after you've heard a story you just
think "that was interesting, I wonder why he told it?" then you
are not catching on! Ponder the story and try to figure out
why I said it, and how it relates to the lecture material.
Again, put everything in your own words. Try to work through
whatever example is given in the opposite direction. Ie. if I
raise a price, you lower it and work out the consequences.
4. Come to class.
The ideas in 103 are sequential. If you miss lecture 4,
you'll have a hard time understanding the rest of the course. The
course follows the book, but the lecture is full of material not
in the book (and vise versa). Over the past decade
attendance in 103 has gone from 90% to about 50%. At the
same time, the number of Ds and Fs have increased from 20% to
40%. You figure that out.
5. Read the book ahead of time. You'll want me to do the work for you, but if you read the relevant chapter before the lecture, and then read it again after, you'll learn a lot more in this course.
I won't lie to you. Economics 103 and 105 are probably the hardest 100 level courses on campus. They take ideas from mathematics, history, and other social sciences, and mix them all up in a model you've never seen before. They're rigorous in that they require you to think INSIDE a box. Over the past several years, SFU has lowered its entrance requirements considerably. We now allow students from high school and college who would never have had a chance at getting in before. Furthermore, even among the better high school graduates, numeracy, verbal, and analytical skills have been falling over time. However, the standards of excellence in Economics have not changed. The result has been an explosion in the number of students who fail both 103 and 105. In some semesters, the fail rate has been as high as 40%! Many of us who teach these courses are convinced that a contributing factor is work ethic. If you were a B- student in high school, you must realize that a significant increase in effort is required for you to pass. The good news is you can do it! Also, Economics 103 and 105 are the two most rewarding 100 level courses on campus. I hope this is a great course for you. Good luck in the course!