{"id":35928,"date":"2018-05-30T01:00:13","date_gmt":"2018-05-30T05:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=35928"},"modified":"2025-05-21T09:12:45","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T13:12:45","slug":"qotd-microeconomics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/05\/30\/qotd-microeconomics\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Microeconomics"},"content":{"rendered":"

… I sincerely believe \u2013 believe to the point that I can say that I know<\/em> \u2013 that principles of microeconomics is the<\/em> most important economics course any student can ever take. Ever. By far. If taught properly, and learned with an open and critical and attentive mind, a principles of microeconomics course will impart to the student more understanding of the operation of economies than will all other economics courses combined \u2013 and I include here even well-taught PhD econ courses.<\/p>\n

Too many academic economists, in my experience, are bored with microeconomic principles. Such principles are so basic<\/em>. No genius is required to understand them or to teach them well. Teaching microeconomic principles provides no opportunity to showcase great cleverness or to push out the frontiers of understanding. It is, instead, to repeat timeless verities \u2013 and verities the majority of which have been known and understood by wise economists for nearly 250 years, and nearly all<\/em> of which have been known and understood by wise economists for the past 50 years.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

My goal in teaching Principles of Microeconomics is not to launch my students on a path to earn a doctorate in the subject, or even for them to become econ majors. While I\u2019m always pleased when a student, after taking my class, switches his or her major to economics, I teach the course as if it is the only economics course these students will ever take. (Empirically, this assumption of mine is true.) So unlike many other intro-econ courses, I do absolutely no mathematics; I even draw no cost curves. I define a handful of esoteric terms (such as the \u201claw of diminishing marginal utility\u201d) but never mention many others (such as \u201cperfect competition\u201d or \u201cmarginal rates of substitution\u201d) that are typical fare in many other principles-of-microecon courses. I wouldn\u2019t even dream of doing indifference-curve analysis in such a course.<\/p>\n

I open the course with some economic history. (\u201cHave you any<\/em> idea how materially prosperous you are compared to the vast majority of your ancestors?!\u201d) I spend a lot<\/em> of time on supply and demand. I devote two whole sections to international trade, another to public choice<\/a>, and one to public goods and taxation. (Each section is two-and-a-half-hours long. And I cover some other topics in addition; I mention these only to give a flavor of my course.)<\/p>\n

My goal \u2013 by teaching basic, foundational, principles of microeconomics \u2013 is to inoculate students against the bulk of the common economic myths that they\u2019ll encounter throughout their lives \u2013 myths such as that the great abundance of goods and services available to us denizens of modernity is the result of a process that can be easily mimicked or understood in detail by smart people or planners \u2013 that the market value of goods or services can be raised by price floors (such as a legislated minimum wage) or lowered by price ceilings (such as rent control) \u2013 that benefits can be created without costs \u2013 that government is an institution capable of rising above the realities that ensure that private institutions never perform \u2018perfectly\u2019 \u2013 that intentions are results \u2013 that destruction of property is a source of prosperity \u2013 that exchange across political boundaries differs in economically meaningful ways from exchange that takes place within political boundaries \u2013 that the only consequences that occur or that matter are those that are easily anticipated and seen.<\/p>\n

Don Boudreaux, “Teach the Timeless Verities”, Caf\u00e9 Hayek<\/em><\/a>, 2014-08-26.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… I sincerely believe \u2013 believe to the point that I can say that I know \u2013 that principles of microeconomics is the most important economics course any student can ever take. Ever. By far. If taught properly, and learned with an open and critical and attentive mind, a principles of microeconomics course will impart […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,79,41],"tags":[1026,1144,1595],"class_list":["post-35928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-education","category-quotations","tag-microeconomics","tag-publicchoicetheory","tag-publicgoods"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9lu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35928"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35929,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35928\/revisions\/35929"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}