ECON220 - Markets, Policies and Prices: Microeconomics 2

Year

Credit points

Campus offering

Prerequisites

10cp from 100-level units in Economics or ECON200 Economics: Policy Frameworks and Markets

Incompatible

ECON202 Microeconomics 2

Unit rationale, description and aim

Understanding markets and market failure is integral to the work economists do in microeconomics. This unit builds upon the content and skills students learned in Microeconomics 1 by providing students with an analytical approach to learning microeconomic terms, concepts and models. This unit will emphasise rigorous logical reasoning and the application of theory to contemporary issues and will explore the responsibilities of individuals, businesses and government in dealing with market structures, market failures and their impact. Students will examine different market structures and evaluate the effectiveness of microeconomic reform in Australia. This unit will involve students using isoquant and iscost analysis of firms and analyse the role of the government in reducing market failure. This unit aims to provide students with a deep understanding of the major streams in microeconomic thought.

Learning outcomes

To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.

Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.

Explore the graduate capabilities.

Content

Topics will include:

• Introduction; markets, prices, consumer and producer surplus
• Consumer theory – how consumers (including Indigenous) make decisions;
• Different market structures – Perfect Competition, Monopoly, Monopolistic Competition and Oligopoly;
• Producer theory;
• Markets: information, resources and labour market;
• Market failure and the Government;
• Externalities, climate change and the environment;
• Inequality and the redistribution of income;
• Income disparities among Aboriginal peoples, and between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples;
• Labour market outcomes for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples;
• Government policies: Microeconomic Reform.

Learning and teaching strategy and rationale

This unit is designed to be offered fully online and will include synchronous delivery of unit content, collaborative online learning activities and other technology-enabled learning synchronous and asynchronous learning opportunities to foster interaction between students.

This unit embraces a constructivist approach to learning where students are encouraged to acquire intermediate microeconomics concepts and assimilate these with prior knowledge, content and skills learned in Microeconomics 1. The lectures will provide content and relevant theory to real-world examples. The tutorials will provide students opportunities to work together on constructing and applying economic models at an intermediate level. 

This is a 10-credit point unit and has been designed to ensure that the time needed to complete the required volume of learning to the requisite standard is approximately 150 hours in total across the semester. To achieve a passing standard in this unit, students will find it helpful to engage in the full range of learning activities and assessments utilised in this unit, as described in the learning and teaching strategy and the assessment strategy. The learning and teaching and assessment strategies include a range of approaches to support your learning such as reading, reflection, discussion, webinars, podcasts, videos etc.  

Assessment strategy and rationale

The assessment items have been particularly designed to cover a variety of tasks, support discipline standards, and enable differentiation of levels of achievement.

1. The skills development activity is scaffolded to ensure that students undertake problem-solving, economic simulation activities, and case studies that will equip students with knowledge of economic theories to solve realistic, complex, and contextually rich situations that might involve analysis of the market behaviour of economic participants. Students will build on this fundamental information in the subsequent tasks.

2. Research assignment provides students with an opportunity to undertake research into the scholarship on a specific topic which might include behaviour of real-world Australian and foreign firms in the particular market structure, behaviour of the households under different market conditions (e.g. the rise of sharing economy) and other topics, and to develop further communication and writing skills.

3. The final examination is based on the fundamental content knowledge and skills built in the skills development activities and research assignment. The purpose of this assessment is to test students’ application of skills, theories and knowledge developed throughout the course. Students will be given problems and case studies that relate to individual and firm decision making under different market structures, analyse production and cost decisions of companies, evaluate the role of the government in solving market failures such as climate change and will be asked to use their critical thinking and analytical skills to provide recommendations at the intermediate level of economic analysis.

Overview of assessments

Representative texts and references

Acemoglu, D., Laibson, D., and List, J. (2018). Microeconomics (2nd ed.). Pearson.

Baumol, W. and Blinder, A. (2019). Economics - Principles and Policy (13th ed.). Cengage Learning, Melbourne.

Gans, J. King, S. Byford, M. and Mankiw, N. (2018). Principles of Microeconomics (7th ed.). Cengage Learning, Melbourne.

Hubbard, G., Garnett, A.M., Lewis, P., and O'Brien, A. (2018). Essentials of Economics (4th ed.). Pearson Education, Sydney.

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2019). Indigenous income and finance. Available online https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/indigenous-income-and-finance

Miller, R.G. (2018). Economics Today: The Micro View (19th ed.). Pearson Education, London.

Parkin, M. and Bade, R. (2019). Microeconomics: Australia in the Global Environment (2nd ed.) Pearson Australia

Further references

Australian Bureau of Statistics, www.abs.gov.au