Subject Code/Name: ECON20002 - Intermediate Microeconomics Workload: 2x 1 hr lecture, 1x 1 hr tutorial per week
Assessment: - Written Assignment 1 (10%)
- Midsem test (20%)
- Written Assignment 2 (10%)
- Exam (60%)
Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture. Lectures were all pre-recorded (i.e. no live lectures)
Past exams available: None, only a sample exam. More on this later
Textbook Recommendation: Microeconomics: Global Edition, Ninth Edition, Robert S. Pindyck and Daniel L. Rubinfeld, (2017). Not needed at all, lecture notes were comprehensive enough and the lecturer himself said they were just 'recommended' not required. To be honest microeconomics at this level pretty much follows Hal Varian's
Intermediate Microeconomics: A Modern Approach, so if you really want more reading then that's a good place to start.
Lecturer(s): Joshua Miller
Year & Semester of completion: 2021 Semester 1
Rating: 4/5
Your Mark/Grade: H1
Pre-requisites: ECON10004 - Introductory Microeconomics Comments: This is required for any economics major. This subject runs also during the summer term. Note that Intermediate Macroeconomics does not require this subject as a pre-requisite.
Lectures and contentThis subject delves a lot more into microeconomics as advertised. You'll learn a lot more about the intricacies of how consumers and suppliers interact with each other in the market in various ways, and also learn some new concepts. I think it is worth mentioning that there is no game theory in this subject, unlike its introductory counterpart.
Joshua is a new lecturer for this subject, and has revamped the subject quite a bit. Looking at past reviews this subject seemed to be a "WAM booster" but I can assure this is not entirely accurate anymore. The lecturer is very passionate about economics and developing both economic and mathematical intuition of concepts. I really appreciated this, since I would always get the mathematical intuition, but never the economic! Otherwise though, this is an interesting subject and you'll learn quite a bit from it.
Lectures themselves were broken up into short videos. They actually never summed up to 1 hour per "full lecture", but this is honestly a lot better than having a straight-up 1 hour lecture. It makes it easier to focus on a specific part of the lecture.
Let's talk about content: in twelve weeks, you'll learn about:
Week 1 - Supply and Demand
Spoiler
This is just a recap of intro to micro - elasticity, supply and demand equations, equilibrium price + quantity. By far the most easy week and you'll probably won't be tested on this directly
Week 2 - Consumer preferences and budget constraints
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This week introduces the concepts of consumer preferences (if given two goods, which one would the consumer choose and how many would they want?). Essentially this is an 'application' of marginal benefits and marginal costs - a VERY RE-OCCURRING CONCEPT THAT I STRONGLY ADVISE YOU TO REMEMBER AND UNDERSTAND!!!
Week 3 - Consumer choice
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Elaborates a bit more upon week 3's consumer preferences - this is the bulk of the mid-semester and perhaps assignment 1 content. I think this is the week you learn about marginal rate of substitution, which is actually the most important concept in this whole subject.
Week 4 - Individual demand, income and substitution effects and intertemporal consumer choice
Spoiler
A big week actually, but the first part is just understanding what happens when a supply/demand curve shifts (lower income? lower supply?). Intertemporal consumer choice is just consumer choice but with respect to time - so we add in interest rates and price baskets. Mathematically, this is somewhat similar to Principles of Finance stuff but it's quite intuitive anyways so don't worry.
Week 5 - Equilibrium Analysis and Efficiency in Exchange
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This is a very tricky week in my humble opinion. Edgeworth boxes are very tricky to understand for myself and there was a 10 mark question about it on the exam that I didn't do...but it's not too bad otherwise this week.
Week 6 - Uncertainty and Consumer Behaviour
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By far my most favourite week since this introduced the concept of uncertainty with consumer behaviour. You learn about risk and actuarially fair premiums. I thought I left actuarial for good! The second assignment was about this week.
Week 7 - Production and Returns to Scale
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After spending half the term on consumers, we now move towards producers. Learn the basics of producer theory and how they interact in certain markets, along with short-run and long-run introductions.
Week 8 - Cost of production
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It takes money to make stuff! Learn how producers minimise costs in a plethora of ways!
Week 9 - Profit Maximisation
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A very interesting point that Joshua made was how minimising costs does not always imply profit maximisation. It turns out (spoilers!) that this is true when marginal revenue is equal to marginal cost...I think. It's been a while sorry hahhaahha
Week 10 - Monopolies and Price Discrimination
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Learn why monopolies are bad for consumers but good for suppliers, and how monopolies price according to their consumer base (first degree/second/third degree price discrimination). I think this was covered back in intro to micro.
Corporate restructuring
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Learn how companies change their internal structure, why and how they do it! Not too much about this week from memory but still pretty important.
Week 11 - Oligopoly
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Whilst monopolies are basically banned from ever happening, oligopolies are a bit more doable. Learn how two companies try and maximise profits - through collusion or not. You also learn about Bertrand competition, and Cournot competition, along with sequential game competition. This is the closest to game theory you'll get here!
TutorialsThis subject was held entirely online. I did not go to any tutorials past week 4 since I could not be bothered. They help, and they are the only way of getting in-tutorial answers. Even then, you had to take photos or write super fast as the tutors would not send their answers afterwards. (perhaps some did, but for most they didn't). The pre-tutorial questions were quite good for the most part, and their answers were released after the week ended.
AssessmentsThe first assignment was about week 2-3 (maybe 4?). I didn't really do well on here, but it was an easy assignment for the most part. Many of my friends scored their highest mark here, so just keep up to date and don't leave things to last minute!
The mid-semester test examined weeks 1 - 5. This was a fair test, but some of the questions in the question bank (people didn't have the exact same MST as each other) were quite hard. There was also an issue with the first question regarding ambiguity of answers, so we all received +6 marks on our MST. This was great since I had no idea how to answer it anyways. My best tip is to just do all the tutorial questions. There are only so many ways they can ask you a question before they repeat themselves!
Assignment 2 was pretty tough. I spent the bulk majority of the two weeks working on it alone (you can do assignments in groups or individual, like intro to macro). Based solely from week 6 (uncertainty), it expanded a lot further beyond the tute questions, so a lot of research was needed.
Something I have yet to mention is that this subject used Edstem as our discussion board. It is super useful and hopefully all subjects implement this, instead of the archaic looking and feeling online tutor.
The final exam (60%) was not bad actually. 60 marks in total, with 6 questions each worth 10 marks. They tested most of the weeks, especially on the weeks which didn't have an assignment about it (i.e. uncertainty was not on it
). To prepare for this: do the sample exam (past exams IMO never help when we have a new lecturer/format), do ALL the tutorial (pre and in-tute), and try to understand what you're doing. Ask freely on Edstem and go-to consults if needed and you'll be very fine for the exam.
Bonus: I think Joshua sent 20+ announcements leading up to exam about how it'll run and how to upload it. This was very annoying but understandable. We just had to handwrite (on tablet or paper) and upload it to Gradescope and match the pages.
Concluding remarksPretty alright subject content-wise, and decent lecturer and subject team. I only wish that there will be less announcements for any future cohorts. I would try and do this subject over summer! On-to intermediate macro now!