Microeconomics I

Year
1
Academic year
2019-2020
Code
01620174
Subject Area
Economics
Language of Instruction
Portuguese
Mode of Delivery
Face-to-face
Duration
SEMESTRIAL
ECTS Credits
6.0
Type
Compulsory
Level
1st Cycle Studies

Recommended Prerequisites

Mathematics corresponding to 12th year (A) and the understanding of abstraction in scientific knowledge.

Teaching Methods

Lectures and practical classes. Practical classes:  in each class a student, or various students, present an economic news (5 m.) orally and also written in few lines and the teacher makes comments to the presentation in order to improve the way it was presented and interpreted; students will solve exercises and reply questions on the blackboard, while answering to questions of the teacher and other students; students will solve questions and exercises listed as homework; students are encouraged to assist colleagues in the blackboard to solve the exercises and answer any questions.

Learning Outcomes

Overall objectives: Economic laws and how economists work; fundamentals of individual behavior and the organization of decentralized economies; to be conscientious of the limitations of our abstractions
Specific objectives: Graphical and numerical representation; individual and market demand and supply behaviour; foundations of individual behaviour, the role of costs in supply; different representations of markets; final and intermediate goods markets; abstract representation of markets and market failures.
Generic competencies: How to read and expose orally news about the economy; to identify the presence of “opportunity costs” in the daily activity ant its value; distinction between normative and positive economics
Specific competencies: Ggraphics and indexes; ceteris paribus assumption violation; mathematical expressions associated with economic behaviors and values for the its parameters; costs and income, private and social; behavior analysis mathematical and graphical analysis.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

Economics as a science
Demand and supply: quantities and prices
Demand and supply elasticity’s
Consumer choice: from utility theory to indifference theory
The cost structure of firms
Perfect competition markets
Monopoly
Imperfect competition
Inputs markets
Market failures.

Head Lecturer(s)

Maria Rita Vieira Martins

Assessment Methods

Continuous Assessment
Participation in class: 10.0%
10 intermediate tests: 40.0%
2 midterm exam : 50.0%

Final Assessment
Exam: 100.0%

Bibliography

ANDRADE, João Sousa - Introdução à economia. Coimbra : Minerva,1998. [BP 330.1 AND]
LIPSEY, Richard G. ; CHRYSTAL, K. Alec -  Economics. 12th ed.. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2011. [BP 330.1 LIP]