The goal of this course is to equip students with the necessary tools to understand individual consumption and production choices under various institutional setups, both under certainty and uncertainty. Throughout the course, we will analyze the market's functioning and its allocative properties. This knowledge forms the essential framework required for further studies in economics. Furthermore, it equips students with the tools to analyze economic phenomena and to develop informed opinions about them.

Knowledge and understanding: Students gain insight into the principal determinants of market prices from both demand and supply perspectives. Furthermore, they comprehend the various market structures and the impact of different microeconomic policy measures. Applying knowledge and understanding: Students are capable of: (1) utilizing microeconomic models to conduct thorough analysis of the primary factors influencing market prices and resource allocation; (2) understanding the content of articles and documents pertinent to microeconomic issues. Making judgments: Students possess the ability to critically assess the operations of a market economy as well as the significance of production and consumption decisions. They can also appraise the influence of key economic participants and the outcomes of policy measures across diverse economic contexts. Communication Skills: Students are able to: (1) analyze data, documents, and viewpoints on critical microeconomic issues; (2) clearly present their analyses and theoretical underpinnings of their conclusions to a peer audience regarding microeconomic questions. Learning skills: Through classes, lecture notes, and articles, students acquire the capability to independently pursue more sophisticated economics courses and to undertake a minor research project (e.g., an undergraduate thesis) on a microeconomic subject. Personal development skills: - Mastery of self-management; - Problem solving expertise; - Application of numeracy skills

• Preferences and consumers’ choice: budget constraint, utility function, indifference curves; utility maximization and individual demand functions; income effect and substitution effect; optimal choice with income expressed in form of good endowments; leisure-labour choice; Intertemporal choice: the discounted utility model. Choice under uncertainty: the expected utility model; attitude towards risk. • The firm and technology: production function, marginal and average product; isoquants and isocosts; returns to scale; revenue curves, cost curves in short and long run: profit maximization, cost minimization. • Market structure: perfect competition, monopoly and oligopoly (Bertrand, Cournot and Stackelberg). Introduction to game theory: simultaneous and sequential games, dominant strategies, Nash equilibrium, subgame- perfect Nash equilibrium. • General equilibrium: Edgeworth box and Pareto efficiency under different market structures, first and second welfare theorems. • Market failures, externalities and public goods.

Hal Varian and Marc Melitz, Intermediate Microeconomics: A Modern Approach, Norton & Company, 10th Edition

Lectures, exercises both in class and at home. Notes, lecture slides and exercises will be posted on the course page.

See the assessment rules document posted on the course page.