ECON20002: Intermediate Microeconomics

The first assignment was about week 2-3 (maybe 4?). I didn't really do well on here, but it was an easy assignment for the most part. Many of my friends scored their highest mark here, so just keep up to date and don't leave things to last minute!

The mid-semester test examined weeks 1 - 5. This was a fair test, but some of the questions in the question bank (people didn't have the exact same MST as each other) were quite hard. There was also an issue with the first question regarding ambiguity of answers, so we all received +6 marks on our MST. This was great since I had no idea how to answer it anyways. My best tip is to just do all the tutorial questions. There are only so many ways they can ask you a question before they repeat themselves!

Assignment 2 was pretty tough. I spent the bulk majority of the two weeks working on it alone (you can do assignments in groups or individual, like intro to macro). Based solely from week 6 (uncertainty), it expanded a lot further beyond the tute questions, so a lot of research was needed.

Something I have yet to mention is that this subject used Edstem as our discussion board. It is super useful and hopefully all subjects implement this, instead of the archaic looking and feeling online tutor.

The final exam (60%) was not bad actually. 60 marks in total, with 6 questions each worth 10 marks. They tested most of the weeks, especially on the weeks which didn't have an assignment about it (i.e. uncertainty was not on it ). To prepare for this: do the sample exam (past exams IMO never help when we have a new lecturer/format), do ALL the tutorial (pre and in-tute), and try to understand what you're doing. Ask freely on Edstem and go-to consults if needed and you'll be very fine for the exam.

Bonus: I think Joshua sent 20+ announcements leading up to exam about how it'll run and how to upload it. This was very annoying but understandable. We just had to handwrite (on tablet or paper) and upload it to Gradescope and match the pages.

This is required for any economics major. This subject runs also during the summer term. Note that Intermediate Macroeconomics does not require this subject as a pre-requisite.

Pretty alright subject content-wise, and decent lecturer and subject team. I only wish that there will be less announcements for any future cohorts. I would try and do this subject over summer! On-to intermediate macro now!

Joshua Miller

This subject delves a lot more into microeconomics as advertised. You'll learn a lot more about the intricacies of how consumers and suppliers interact with each other in the market in various ways, and also learn some new concepts. I think it is worth mentioning that there is no game theory in this subject, unlike its introductory counterpart.

Joshua is a new lecturer for this subject, and has revamped the subject quite a bit. Looking at past reviews this subject seemed to be a "WAM booster" but I can assure this is not entirely accurate anymore. The lecturer is very passionate about economics and developing both economic and mathematical intuition of concepts. I really appreciated this, since I would always get the mathematical intuition, but never the economic! Otherwise though, this is an interesting subject and you'll learn quite a bit from it.

Lectures themselves were broken up into short videos. They actually never summed up to 1 hour per "full lecture", but this is honestly a lot better than having a straight-up 1 hour lecture. It makes it easier to focus on a specific part of the lecture.

Let's talk about content: in twelve weeks, you'll learn about:
Week 1 - Supply and Demand

None, only a sample exam. More on this later

4/5

Microeconomics: Global Edition, Ninth Edition, Robert S. Pindyck and Daniel L. Rubinfeld, (2017). Not needed at all, lecture notes were comprehensive enough and the lecturer himself said they were just 'recommended' not required. To be honest microeconomics at this level pretty much follows Hal Varian's Intermediate Microeconomics: A Modern Approach, so if you really want more reading then that's a good place to start.

This subject was held entirely online. I did not go to any tutorials past week 4 since I could not be bothered. They help, and they are the only way of getting in-tutorial answers. Even then, you had to take photos or write super fast as the tutors would not send their answers afterwards. (perhaps some did, but for most they didn't). The pre-tutorial questions were quite good for the most part, and their answers were released after the week ended.

2x 1 hr lecture, 1x 1 hr tutorial per week

2021 Semester 1

H1

Online midsem test (10%), 2 x 2-Part Assignments (10% each), Final Exam (60%), Tutorials (10%)

Intermediate Microeconomics is the second-year continuation of ECON10004 Introductory Microeconomics, which is also a prerequisite. The 7 topics of inter-micro are:

1. Consumer and producer theory
2. Competitive markets and monopolies
3. Partial and general equilibrium
4. Oligopoly and duopoly
5. Game Theory
6. Choice under uncertainty
7. Economics of information

Yes, with screen capture.

Svetlana Danilkina

Yes - plenty, but none are fully relevant to current course, and many do not come with answers. There is however a sample Section A exam released at the end of the teaching period on LMS.

5 out of 5 (objectively 3 out of 5, but +2 for Svetlana's presence)

Microeconomics, 7th or 8th Edition, by Rubinfield and Pindyck. It's not an absolute necessity.

2x2hr lectures and 2x1hr tutorials a week for 6 weeks.

2020 Summer Term

H1 (86)

_all about consumer's preferences, their utility (satisfaction) and how to choose bundles that can maximise their utility_imo, this is a basic but very important topic. If you have a good understanding of this topic, you will have a solid ground to later build up the knowledge of further topics since they link to each other!

_as mentioned above, this links closely to Consumer theory but with some different definitions etc.

_good old Perfect competition will appear again. Basically just some intro micro stuff but a bit harder. Knowing how to derive your AVC, MC, ATC, graph them and solving some practical problems are what focused on throughout this topic. _then we moved on to Monopoly with the application of price discrimination. Remember the kink total demand from Intro Micro? It is still definitely relevant here .

_this is considered as one of the hardest topic of the entire course and I probably have to agree. I did have some troubles understanding this topic at first but by doing questions and consulting my tutors paid off in the end.
_General equilibrium involves trading between 2 consumers or producers etc. Instead of the x-y axis that we usually see, they introduce an "up-side-down" x-y axis, by putting these 2 axis together, you construct something called the Edgeworth box._After getting used to seeing graphs in an up side down manner, you will quickly pick up your pace in solving questions.

_Back to the topic of Prisoner's dilemma from Intro micro but with further extensions. Now we introduce how game theory can be applied to firms which make decisions about the quantity to produce or price to set. This extends our market structure from Monopoly to Oligopoly (with Cournot, Stackelberg, Bertrand model). The math in this topic is a bit longer (thus a bit tedious) compared to others since we usually have to find profit maximising output for 2 firms and not just one.

_this topic involves a bit of probability, like calculating Expected value and Variance etc and its application in buying Insurance._overall this type of behavioural economics can be a bit difficult to get your head around at first according to some people I talked to but you should be fine with more practices.

_this topic is included in the very last lecture and only takes up a few slides. Its short and easy to understand (imo mainly because the Lemon model in this topic is not examinable).
B. Subject review:
1. Lecturer: As mentioned above, Svetlana is an amazing lecturer, her notes are very easy to follow and the tutorial questions she set provide excellent practice for problem solving skill. She does not trick students with big surprise questions on the exam and if you know your stuff well, able to do the tutorial questions, you should be fine! Sometimes we had some in class quiz (did not count towards your mark thou) but that was a great opportunity to revise and know where you stand in the cohort. Svetlana also writes very detailed subject outline that tells us specifically what is important for the exam, so you should definitely have a read and tick of that list during swotvac.
2. Tutorial: i actually very enjoy the tutorial for this subject. Some tute questions can be very demanding and require loads of math derivation but at the end of the day, if you understand the concept, the math should be second nature and no rote learning is required. My tutor, Daniel, is very helpful and explains stuff in great details. Since the amount of questions we have to go through in tute can be a bit overwhelming sometimes, it is very easy to fall behind so I recommend going through the questions again at your own pace and read through Svetlana's solutions (btw her tute's solution is extremely detailed again).
3. MST: though there are a few tricky questions, it is not something that you cannot do well in if you know your stuff. The majority of the cohort did very well.
4. Written examination: just as Svetlana's describes her style of writing exam questions: there will be no big surprise. The things in the exam are pretty much have been seen before with modifications. Some are harder and takes a bit of thinking but the rest is pretty manageable. I managed to finish the exam on time with around 10 mins to check.That's it from me for now, if you have any further questions, please dont hesitate to pm me ! Good luck guys!

one 1 hour online MST (10%), two written assignment (each contributes 10%, total 20%), tutorial attendance (10%), 2 hour written examination (60%)

First of all, just to put it out there, this is an amazing subject! If you are interested in economics and math (especially calculus for further study in economics field), I would definitely recommend this subject. A. Here are the list of topics that we go through in order:

Yes, with screen capture.

Svetlana Danilkina (awesome awesome lecturer!)

Yes. Around 6 past exams are available. However, the majority was written by the old lecturer of this subject, Andrew Clarke. His material is still relevant to the course to some extent but further details about which part is still on the course will be specified on LMS under these papers file.

5 Out of 5

Microeconomics (Eight Edition) by Robert S. Pindyck, Daniel L. Rubinfeld

2 x two hours lecture per week + 2 x one hour tutorial per week

Summer 2016. Summer course only takes up 6 weeks instead of 12 weeks like a normal subject during the year so you would be expected to learn the content at double the pace, but it is fairly manageable for this subject (see review below)

H1