Microeconomics I

The Singaporean Government is increasingly engaging the public, and as economists we are responsible for contributing towards better public decisions. This is especially important as good public policy processes place value on social impact, seeks to understand the behavior of Singapore's diverse society, and makes sense and use of increasingly abundant behavioral data. As the Singaporean economy gets more advanced and complex, and citizens get better educated and informed, we rely on decisions strengthened by sound economic thinking. The economist must move towards more rigorous reasoning across the levels of household, corporate, and public choice. In this course we apply fundamental microeconomic principles complemented by behavioral economics to various current everyday concerns in Singapore. The course aims to deliver a progressive and rigorous introduction to basic concepts and models of microeconomics, applied to current trends local and global. Microeconomics is one of the three core pillars of an Economics major. This is an important module that will serve as a prerequisite for almost all major PE modules. The first part of the course covers the theory of individual decision-making in consumption, risk and labor. The second part of the course covers the theory of firms making production decisions when operating under various market structures, in particular price discrimination with market power and strategic interactions between firms. This course will also expose students to new developments in the field of microeconomics which have now come to assume a central role, in particular behavioral economics. Students will learn basic theories that can be abstract and simple but yet so relevant and powerful in explaining decision problems in our everyday lives. On the one hand, it will give students with either no previous economics training a chance to close the gap with those with a stronger background. On the other hand, it will give everyone a chance to appreciate microeconomics in action right from the start of their education at NTU - a feature that is surprisingly amiss in many Economics undergraduate programs worldwide.