ECON10004: Introductory Microeconomics

- Weekly multiple choice quizzes (10%)
- MST (5%)
- Assignment 1 (10%)
- Assignment 2 (15%)
- Exam (60% hurdle)

Assessment Advice:
- Weekly multiple choice quizzes (10%), of which your top 7 scores are averaged to make up 10% of your grade. (Note that since this was done during one of the COVID semesters so tutorial attendance was waived and we just had to do the pre-tutorial quizzes, pretty much a free 10% since we were allowed 2 attempts at each quiz)
-MST (5%) is a 10 mark MCQ quiz. This is probably the easiest to score well in, as the questions are basically the same as those in the weekly pre-tute quizzes with a few numbers or words switched out. If you pay attention to the weekly quiz feedback, you should be able to score high in this one.
- Assignment 1 (10%): 1000 words, fairly straight forward, we just had to answer questions on the first area of study (supply/demand, market equilibrium, international trade). If you spend a couple of hours on this it should be fairly easy to get 9 or 10%. One piece of advice for all assessments, USE GRAPHS!!
- Assignment 2 (15%): 1500 words, again very similar to assignment 1, but this time with 1100 words to answer questions, and a 400 word case study (which is pretty easy to get marks on, I waffled quite a bit here). This assignment was largely focused on the second area of study (theory of the firm, price discrimination, marginal cost/marginal revenue), but also included some stuff on market failure.
- Exam (60% hurdle): Straightforward, no hidden surprises exam. Section A consisted of 10 multiple choice questions, section B consisted of 3 short answer questions and section 3 included 3 sections of questions more similar to that of the assignments. Though the exam itself is not difficult, I'd recommend really making use of graphs to show your thinking, planning your time out well and working fast, as I ran out of time at the end and struggled to upload all my graphs (online exams amirite).

The three main areas of study for this subjects are: Weeks 1-4 Market Outcomes in Perfectly Competitive Markets, Weeks 5-9 Theory of the firm and managerial economics, Weeks 10-11 Game theory and Week 12 Exam Revision. For lecture 24, Jeff asks students to email him for any topics they want him to go over so I'd recommend making use of this as he further explains the requested topics here.
As a first year with no background in economics at all, this ended up being my favourite subject this semester. Jeff kept his lectures short enough as to not be overly time consuming or boring, and really kept us in the loop via LMS announcements. He was also pretty quick to reply to emails too so I'd recommend emailing him or your tutor if you're unsure about anything. As for tutorials, I attended them for the first 5 or so weeks but quickly found them to be useless. The tutorial worksheets are actually VERY useful for exam revision (basically the same format as sections B and C of the exam) but I ended up just doing them in my own time and checking the solutions at the end of the week, as the tutor's explanations were hard to understand and ended up just confusing me. Overall a great subject, I'd say I recommend it to all but it's a Comm core so y'know

Yes, with screen capture.

Jeff Borland - I really enjoyed Jeff's lectures this semester. They were well-structured, clear and concise, and he provided just enough examples to get the point across without boring you. I'd recommend printing out the slides before the lecture, having a flick through and taking notes of anything that doesn't make sense to you and paying particular attention to those parts during the lecture. I'd then make summary notes at the end of each week to solidify my understanding (but I'm sure most people could get by with just annotated lecture slides). I found that drawing graphs to understand cause and effect really helped too.

Yes. Since this was Jeff's first semester teaching Intro Micro again, he provided us with past exams that he wrote (2011 and 2014 I believe..?, as well as a 2020 mock exam). They were all pretty much the same structure as the actual exam so I'd recommend paying particular attention to these, or at least read through the sample answers during SWOTVAC so you know what kind of answers they're looking for. (I didn't really look through these until the night before the exam oops)

4.5 Out of 5

Didn't bother looking at the recommended texts beyond week 2, don't feel like I missed out on much.

Weekly: 2 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 1 hour tutorial

2020 Semester 2

91 (H1)

• Multiple choice test (5% of total)
• Written assignment 1 (15% of total)
• Written assignment 2 (15% of total)
• Final exam (60% of total)

Note that the final exam is a hurdle. (50%+ required on the final exam itself in order to pass the subject.)

Assessments wise, we had a multiple choice test (5%) consisting of 10 questions that occurred in week 4. This was pretty easy if you've kept up with the work and honestly if you did VCE Economics, you could answer like 8 of them right now...

The first written assignment (15%) occurred just before the mid-sem break, so around week 5. It is an application of the things you've learnt up to this point. It seems very daunting at first, but as you breakdown the questions themselves they get easier. We had around a month and a bit to complete it. I received a 48/50, my best mark in this subject.

The second written assignment (15%) occurred in around week 7-8, and was due around week 11. This is the same as assignment 1 but just on things learnt since assignment 1. This was easier than the first one, but I found myself getting lower on this than the first one. (It seemed like almost everyone else improved however.)

For the previous two assessments, it is highly recommended to consult the discussion boards, Cameron Low (I think he's like the head tutor? no clue) is an absolute saviour in this and in Principles of Finance (review soon hehe) as he answered basically every query anyone had. Definitely the reason why I got such a high mark in my assignments.

The final exam (70%) was of moderate difficulty. I am unsure as to what I got but I ran out of time and had to rush the questions. I think with proper study and doing past papers, you can easily get a 80+ in this exam and hence really, the subject itself.

Some background about me: I did VCE Economics but it is not a pre-requisite for this subject (or any at unimelb). With that being said, it does help with understanding early concepts like opportunity cost, price elasticity of demand, demand/supply graphs but expect to go a lot in-depth and learn a lot of new things. I think those that did IB HL Economics will find this course pretty standard (...at least that's what my friend told me...)

This subject is a compulsory subject for all commerce students, and a pass is required to successfully enroll in ECON10003 Introductory Macroeconomics (another compulsory BCom subject) and ECON20002 Intermediate Microeconomics. With that being said, you'll meet a whole range of people doing this from the arts faculty through the economics stream over there.

Overall, this is a very well done subject despite the pandemic forcing online teaching. I think this subject would be a lot better if it weren't for the forced transition. Otherwise, a very good introduction to microeconomics and university schooling in general.

Yes, with screen capture.

Tom ran the afternoon stream of lectures, and Jonathan ran the morning stream of lectures. Both lecture streams occurred on Tuesdays and Thursdays. For this review, only Tom's lectures will be included, since I never went/viewed any of Jonathan's lectures.

The course itself is well designed and presented in an approachable manner, Tom's lectures often included various tidbits of useful information that didn't appear on the lecture slides. As noted by someone a while back here, Tom's engineering background means that his explanations of any equations here were easily understandable and basically just only told you the useful parts. With that being said, some people did complain about his intonation of his voice but honestly you get used to it. Lectures themselves included examples and definitions, but most of Tom's working out was done on a second projector, but he uploads those as well. Overall, the lectures were sufficient and sometimes entertaining! Both lecturers seem to do a great job.

Yes, a selection of exams ranging back from 2016. (but not all exams from that period, e.g. 2016 semester 2 was not given, but semester 1 was.)

Entry into Commerce, Biomedicine or Science degrees OR a study score of 25+ in Methods otherwise.

4/5

Principles of Microeconomics, 7th edition by Gans, King, Byford and Mankiw, and Microeconomics: Case Studies and Applications, 4th edition by Borland. The first textbook is highly useful and is used for module readings. The second is to give you a taste of the applications of things you've learned over the course of the subject, so feel free to skip on this. With that being said, they do give out chapter references for reading in modules for those inclined.

Tutorials were fine, essentially you break off into small groups answering questions from the tutorial sheet given at the start of the session, and then collate answers while the tutor presents the correct answers. My tutor was pretty good and I am yet to have heard of a "bad" tutor from this semester. These people also mark your assignments and potentially the exam (unconfirmed) so it's always good to build a good relationship with them! Ironically, I almost never showed up to any tutorials after week 5 since I felt the tutorial videos made for international students with incompatible timezones were sufficient.

2 x 1 hr lectures and 1 x 1 hr tutorials per week.

2020 Semester 1. Note that this semester was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Classes transitioned into online learning by the third week of semester.

H2B choked on exam

quiz 5%, assignment 1 10%, assignment 2 15%, tutorial attendance and participation 10%, final examination 60% (with hurdle)

1. Lecture
Overall, Tom is a good lecturer. There are two lecture streams in this semester with two different lecturers. Compared with the other lecturer whose lectures were regarded as the "most boring class for the entire semester" by one of my friends, Tom's lectures were more intellectually rich and entertaining. He would add some interesting cases inside the lecture slides instead of plainly talking about the theories and diagrams for the whole class. The problem is with Tom's pattern of speech. He frequently rushed in the lectures and could not make his pronunciation and expression clear whenever the lecture content was overloaded and/or time was limited. However, I would reckon that I was able to make sense of his logic when I spent some time listening to the recording. As long as you can get adapted to his way of teaching, listening to Tom's lectures should be a valuable experience.

2. Tutorial
My tutor for this subject is a bit incompetent (hence I cannot and do not want to remember his name). There were at least two times in the semester such that he forgot to bring the tutorial sheets to the class and aimlessly explained the questions on the whiteboard which made no sense at all! However, even though there was nothing to look at, he still required students to discuss the "questions" as a group and blamed us for not being passionate and participative. What the hell should we discuss about? Due to these facts, I did not go to two tutorials and lost 2 out of 10 for tutorial attendance and participation. I also found out that he sometimes failed to explain the questions accurately and even failed to recognise his mistake hence correct it. This can be really misleading since a lot of tutorial questions are highly related to exam questions with similar styles. For me, the tutorial sheets were not useful resources for preparing the final exam, and I did not perform well in the exam as a result. For students who have a nice tutor, tutorial for this subject can be vital such that you should prioritise the revision of tutorial questions rather than going through the lecture slides at first.

3. Assessments
For most (commerce) students, the microeconomics quiz is the first piece of assessment that you will have during the university career, thus this quiz may not be such straightforward as you think (like what we have prior to university). The quiz questions are mostly case-based, so you should not only familiarise yourself with the pertinent knowledge but also analyse the cases correctly to choose the right answers. There are eight questions in total with a 25 minute time limit; however, I reckon that this time limit is not as sufficient as you think, since some cases can be really tricky. Overall, it is hard to get all answers correct, but the average should not be very low; after all, this is a MCQ and you can discuss the questions with your fellow students - a good start point for university assessments.

The two individual assignments are my favourite part of this subject. Indeed, they are a bit time-consuming, especially when we need to use PowerPoint to draw the graphs (very inconvenient); but the reward for such effort is fascinating - both assignments were marked out of 60 and I have never seen any of my friends who got a grade below 52. The fact is that there are correct answers for each of the assignment questions (mostly calculation-based), so you can check your answers with others to make sure they are correct. There are also no formatting issues or any similar (horrible) requirements, so marks are awarded for correct answers only.

In terms of tutorial attendance and participation, I cannot give any recommendations since my tutor is awkward as mentioned above. Overall, this ought to be an easy mark to get.

The final exam for this subject is a perfect reflection of how you are going for the semester. Although the MCQ part of the final exam can still be tricky like the MCQ assessment, students may not struggle with the short- and long-answer questions, since every question should have appeared in the lecture slides. As long as you listen to each lecture carefully and understand the main topics, there is no excuse not to work out these final exam questions. This also helps us identify what to review in the SWOTVAC - we can mainly focus on the most important theory, diagram or model in each lecture since they are the only stuff that may appear in the final exam. Tutorial sheets and past exam questions are good resources in terms of exam preparation (though I did not go through them in detail), since what you see there should be what you will see in the exam.
A final point to make is about mathematical issues. Compared with macroeconomics that you will learn later, microeconomics focuses more on mathematical stuff, so make sure you are familiar with them and have a workable calculator in the final exam.

Yes, and can be crucial to learn this subject well.

Tom Wilkening

There are four past exam papers provided.

3.0/5.0

It is still not mandatory to purchase the textbook (like many other commerce subjects), but might be useful since some explanations in the lecture slides are not clear enough.

2 × 1 hour lecture, 1 × 1 hour tutorial

2019 Semester 1

91

1. Online multiple choice test (5%)
2. Assignment 1: 750 words (10%)
3. Assignment 2: 1,250 words (15%)
4. Tutorial participation (10%)
5. Final Exam (60%) - hurdle

Intro Microeconomics is compulsory for all economics majors, as well as all 1st-year commerce students in general. It also seems to be one of the most popular choice for breadth, though these poor unfortunate souls usually begin wishing they did beer tasting instead by week 3.

The subject covers four main topics, which are:
1. Competitive markets
2. Welfare + government intervention
3. Theory of the firm
4. Game theory

Some of the content repeats VCE Economics, however as someone who didn't do 3/4, I found it relatively easy to catch up. The content is quite intuitive and isn't overly difficult, though the same cannot be said about the maths.

Yes, with screen capture

Phil McCalman, Tom Wilkening

Plenty in the library, many more posted on LMS during SWOTVAC, though not all are completely relevant as the course content was changed for 2019.

2 Out of 5

Principles of Microeconomics by Joshua Gans, Stephen King, Gregory Mankiw, Martin Byford. The newest edition is 7th ed, but any would do (I got by with 3rd ed.)
Case studies and Applications by Jeff Borland (not really needed)

• Lectures: 2 x 1 hr per week
• Tutorials: 1 x 1 hr per week

2019 Semester 1

H2A (79) so close yet so far

MC quiz, two assignments worth 25% together, exam 60%, tute participation 10%

There are already many reviews posted for intro micro, so I'll just shed some light on some aspects that I feel were important during my semester.

Go to tutorials. The 10% is really a free 10% that everyone should get. You might not have to go to some lectures (there are some lectures that can be listened to at 2x the speed at home) but you should go to all the tutorials. If you've got a good grasp of how everything works in tutorials, it's really hard not to do well in the subject

Don't buy the book unless you feel like you need the extra grounding and background knowledge going into microeconomics from a non-commerce background. I just think Gareth's lecture notes provide a very concise and reliable reference point from day 1 of the course.

Make sure you pay attention in the first few weeks, because demand and supply graphs pave the foundation for understanding of the course. The concept of 'marginal benefits' and such is also crucial, the entire semester revolves around cost benefit analysis, and understanding of the demand and supply graphs.

As for pink/blue sheets provided after the tutorials. I strongly suggest that you go over ALL the questions on the pink sheet, because a grasp of the pink sheets alone is sufficient to get a low H1. Blue sheets are less essential, so I suggest you only do the questions that particularly stick out and boggle you, because the rest is pretty elementary with regards to difficulty.

Exam revision should predominately be revision of the pink sheets and not the lecture notes! I made the mistake of spending most of my time solidifying knowledge learnt from the lecture notes, but the lecture notes are more 'theory-based'. Once you nail the theory and understand all of the theory, practical work should make the bulk of your study, because the exam doesn't really demand rote memorization of 'what is market structure' etc.

Do the practice exams! There are a lot of similar and recycled question that pop up on every exam, this is probably because there is only so much they can ask for the course (eg. VC vs FC, price discrim etc).

Yes, screen capt included

Gareth James.

Plentiful, past exams up to 2005ish

4.5 out of 5

Principles of Microeconomics, okay but I don't think you need this textbook, the lecture slides are probably better. Borland case studies book is a good read, but I never opened it for the semester.

two 1hr lectures, one 1hr tute

2013, S1

H1

This is a brilliant subject. For those that have never done any commerce or business related subjects like me, this is a great introduction to economics.
Most important thing about this subject is to GO TO TUTORIALS. Not only do you get a free 10% to your mark, but it also helps you understand a lot of the content. Pre-reading the textbook was also something that helped me a lot to understand concepts. The topics were also quite interesting, especially Game Theory. The exam is very similar to previous exams and if you know the basic topics well, you should do fine. Do note that if you are majoring in actuarial studies that this is a subject for accreditation, so as long as you don't try to fail, you should be good to go.

Yes, with screen capture.

Gareth James. Quite boring due to monotonous and slow voice. I fell asleep on countless occasions both in lectures and at home whilst listening.

Yes. There's heaps. Solutions are also posted online.

5 Out of 5

Principles of Microeconomics by Gans, King and Mankiw. There are several versions of this textbook as well as an American version just by Mankiw. However they are all exactly the same except for the formatting like the font and pictures. Definitely recommend it as it was the only textbook out of all my subjects that I actually used for assignments and learning stuff. There's another case study book by Jeff Borland but I never used it despite buying it.

Two 1-hour lectures and a 1-hour tutorial per week (3 hours in total)

2012 Semester 1

H1 (92)