Instructor: Robin D. Hanson, Asst. Professor, Economics (rhanson@gmu.edu, http://robinhanson.com)
Office Hours: 4:30-6:00pm, at Arlington office, Truland Building Room 400Q, 703-993-4854. Other days I'm usually in at Carow Hall Room 10A, 703-993-2326.
Catalog Entry:

611 Microeconomic Theory (3:3:0). Prerequisite: Admission to the doctoral or master's program or ECON 306, ECON 311, and MATH 113, or permission of graduate coordinator. Theory of behavior of consumers, firms, and resource suppliers. Theories of choice under conditions of risk and uncertainty. Partial equilibrium analysis of competitive and noncompetitive markets. General equilibrium analysis, welfare economics, and introduction to capital theory.

Robert S. Pindyck and Daniel L. Rubinfeld, Microeconomics, 6th Edition, Prentice Hall, 2005, ISBN 0-13-008461-1.

• Class Participation 5% of grade. Please join in class discussions.
• Homework 20% of grade. Assigned weekly, due the next week when solutions are handed out. (No credit for late work.) A random half of weeks are collected and graded. A mixture of problem sets and short papers.
• Midterm Exam 20% of grade.
• Final Exam 35% of grade. All exams are in class, open book/notes.
• Big Change Paper 20% of grade. Due Dec. 6. Imagine a single big change to our economy, and then use microeconomics to describe the consequences of that change, including whether those changes are good or bad. You might, for example, imagine how things would be changed if people became immortal, if Star Trek style "transporters" were availalble, if very reliable lie detectors were available, if there were a strong world government, or if no one needed sleep. I grade papers by counting the number of what I consider valid and relevant points (weak points count half).