Reference
Contents
Citations and bibliography
You can open the file in BibDesk on macOS, JabRef on Windows, or Zotero or Mendeley online.
You can download a BibTeX file of all the non-web-based readings in the course.
Things you should know for Exam 1
Capitalism
You should understand…
- …the components of the capitalist economic system: private property, markets, and firms
- …what happens when any of these components gets distorted
- …what makes public goods different from regular goods (see public goods game)
- …what institutions are and how they coordinate action
- …what GDP is, what it measures, what it doesn’t measure, what problems there are with it, what alternatives there are for it, and why it continues to be popular
- …the difference between real and nominal values (and why we care)
- …what a price index is
- …what purchasing power parity (PPP) is (and also what the Big Mac Index is)
- …the downsides of capitalism (inequality + environmental damage)
Games and simulations played in class:
- Pit market trading with paper clips: how supply and demand are derived from producer willingness to accept and consumer willingness to pay
Important fomulas:
Adjusting for inflation:
\[ \text{Real} = \frac{\text{Nominal}}{\text{Price Index / 100}} \]
Percent change:
\[ \frac{\text{Current} - \text{Previous}}{\text{Previous}} \]
Compound annual growth rate (CAGR); periodic method (this assumes interest is compounded once a year; this is the harder method and you don’t really need to use it):
\[ r = exp(\frac{ln(\frac{\text{Price index}_{\text{new}}}{\text{Price index}_{\text{old}}})}{t}) - 1 \]
Compound annual growth rate (CAGR): continuous method (this assumes interest is compounded continuously; this is the easier method and you should generally use this):
\[ r = \frac{ln(\frac{\text{Price index}_{\text{new}}}{\text{Price index}_{\text{old}}})}{t} \]
Helpful resources:
Social interactions, economic outcomes, and incentives
You should understand…
- …that perfectly rational individual behavior can create irrational and inferior social outcomes
- …how to use game theory to analyze social interactions. In particular, you should be able to define the following: game, zero-sum, Pareto efficiency, Nash equilibrium, pure strategy, mixed strategy, dominant strategy
- …what social dilemmas, collective action problems, and tragedies of the commons are
- …the difference between a stag hunt game and a prisoners dilemma game, why that difference is important, and why stag hunts are possibly a better metaphor for social dilemmas
- …what factors prevent individuals from cooperating, such as uneven payoffs, lack of assurance, preference falsification, dishonesty, and selfishness
- …how to fix collective action problems with altruism, repetition and iteration, infinitization, punishment, norms, and institutions
- …how incentives can get crowded out and distorted when extrinsic rewards or punishments replace intrinsic motivation (i.e. don’t marketize important social relationships; pay enough or don’t pay at all)
Games and simulations played in class:
- Public goods game with black and red cards: free riding, non-rivalry, and non-excludability
- The Evolution of Trust: prisoners dilemmas and optimal responses and strategies
Helpful resources:
- Battle of the Sexes and mixed strategies
- Prisoner’s Dilemma and payoffs
- Chicken
- 2×2 game solver to check answers
Public policy for fairness and efficiency
You should understand…
- …the difference between Pareto efficiency and fairness
- …why Pareto efficiency is not necessarily the best standard for measuring the success of a policy
- …how we can measure fairness with substantive standards, procedural standards, and Rawlsian standards
- …how cultural perceptions of luck and fairness shape public policy
- …how ideas of efficiency and fairness apply to international trade
- …how public policy can be used to change the payoffs in games (e.g. making it more expensive to use water and deplete public goods)
- …what elasticity measures (i.e. what it means for something to be inelastic vs. elastic)
- …why good public policies should be a Nash equilibrium
- …how philosophy and research deisgn allow us to estimate causal relationships
- …how difference-in-difference estimation works
Games and simulations played in class
- Veil of ignorance simulation: example of how different policies emerge when decided behind a veil of ignorance
Work, wellbeing, and scarcity
You should understand…
- …what opportunity costs are and how they influence decision making
- …how to draw a budget line and what budget lines mean
- …how utility is measured and what indifference curves are
- …the difference between the marginal rate of substitution (slope of the indifference curve) and the marginal rate of transformation (slope of the feasible frontier)
- …what it means when marginal product and marginal utility diminish
- …how to find the utility-maximizing level of consumption given preferences and budget constraints
- …the difference between normal and inferior goods
- …what income effects and substitution effects are and how they’re related to government policies
Games and simulations played in class:
- XYZ Airlines: diminishing marginal product
Important formulas:
All the ways marginal utility (or marginal rate of substitution) can be written:
\[ MRS = \frac{dy}{dx} = \frac{\Delta y}{\Delta x} = \frac{\text{Price}_x}{\text{Price}_y} = \frac{MU_x}{MU_y} = \frac{\partial u / \partial x}{\partial u / \partial y} \]
Helpful resources:
- How to draw income and substitution effects
- Example Income and Subsitution Effects For Normal and Inferior Goods
- Income and Substitution Effects
The firm
You should understand…
- …how the decision-making structures of firms and markets are different
- …that perfectly complete contracts are difficult (if not impossible) to create
- …what happens when there are incomplete contracts
- …what a principal-agent problem is
- …adverse selection
- …moral hazard
- …how firms can use the labor discipline model to induce higher worker effort
- …why involuntary unemployment is necessary
Games and simulations played in class
- Market for lemons: how adverse selection distorts markets and how the presence of information restores competition to markets
Important fomulas:
Gini coefficients:
# R code library(ineq) # List of incomes incomes <- c(10000, 20000, 50000, 100000, 200000) # Calculate Gini coefficient ineq(incomes, type = "Gini")
## [1] 0.4842105
Alternatively, you can use this formula where \(x\) = income, \(y\) = cumulative proportion of the population, and \(\mu_x\) = mean of income:
\[ \frac{2}{\mu_x} \text{Cov}(x, y) \]
Firms and markets
You should understand…
- …how demand curves are derived from consumer willingness to pay
- …the difference between fixed costs and variable costs
- …how to calculate total cost, total revenue, average fixed costs, average variable costs, marginal cost, marginal revenue, and maximum profit
- …that maximum profit occurs where marginal revenue is equal to marginal cost (\(MR = MC\))
- …that socially optimal quantity occurs when the demand is equal to the marginal cost (\(\text{demand} = MC\))
- …how to calculate elasticity of demand (\(-\frac{\Delta Q}{\Delta P} \times \frac{P}{Q}\))
- …what elasticity measures and why it is important in public policy and administration
- …how a single demand curve can have an overall elasticity and different elasticities at each point
- …economies of scale, diseconomies of scale, economies of agglomeration, network effects, and the difference between short-run and long-run costs
- …that market equilibria (i.e. optimal price and quantity) occur at the intersection of supply and demand curves
- …how government-imposed price floors and price ceilings distort market-clearing equilibria
- …and be able to identify the differences between changes in supply/demand and changes in quantity supplied/demanded
- …what consumer and producer surplus represent
- …the relationship between elasticity of supply and/or demand and the size of consumer and producer surplus
- …how taxes impose deadweight loss on society
- …how the burden of taxes depends on the elasticity of supply and/or demand
- …why governments tax and the philosophical and ethical principles behind who should bear the burden of taxes
- …the difference between price-taking and price-making
- …how firms try to gain market power, including monopolies, branding, cost controls, regulation, and switching costs
- …why firms try to gain market power
- …why firms want to price discriminate
- …the consequences of monopolistic production (lower Q and higher P than what would happen under perfect competition; deadweight loss)
- …how governments can regulate monopolies
- …why natural monopolies exist and how governments can induce them to produce at socially optimal levels
- …how firms need to be somewhat anti-competitive and anti-capitalist in order to maximize profits, innovate, and (essentially) be more competitive and capitalist
Games and simulations played in class:
- BYU Creamery chocolate milk: Q, TVC, TFC, TC, MC, AVC, AFC, ATC, and π
Important fomulas:
Demand:
\[ P = aQ + b \]
Total cost:
\[ TC = TFC + TVC \\ \text{or} \\ \text{A formula using } Q \text{, like} \\ TC = aQ^2 + b \]
Average cost:
\[ AC = \frac{TC}{Q} \]
Marginal cost:
\[ \begin{aligned} MC &= \frac{\Delta TC}{\Delta Q} \\ &\text{or} \\ MC &= \text{First derivative of TC} \\ &= 2aQ \text{ (if } TC = aQ^2 + b) \end{aligned} \]
Total revenue:
\[ \begin{aligned} TR &= PQ \\ &\text{or} \\ TR &= (aQ + b)Q \\ &= aQ^2 + bQ \end{aligned} \]
Average revenue:
\[ AR = \frac{TR}{Q} \]
Marginal revenue:
\[ \begin{aligned} MR &= \frac{\Delta TR}{\Delta Q} \\ &\text{or} \\ MR &= \text{First derivative of TR} \\ &= 2aQ + b \text{ (if } TR = aQ^2 + bQ) \end{aligned} \]
Maximum profit:
\[ max(\pi): MC = MR \]
Price elasticity of demand (see class 15 for an explanation of how to get to \(- \frac{\Delta Q}{\Delta P} \times \frac{P}{Q}\)):
\[ \varepsilon = -\frac{\% \text{ change in quantity demand}}{\% \text{ change in price}} = - \frac{\Delta Q}{\Delta P} \times \frac{P}{Q} \]
Important graphs:
Consumer surplus, producer surplus, tax revenues, tax burdens, and deadweight loss (use algebra and geometry to figure out the areas of the triangles (\(\frac{1}{2} \times b \times h\)) and rectangles (\(l \times w\))):
Helpful resources:
- Derivatives of Exponential Functions (how to calculate derivatives quickly)
- BYU chocolate milk (empty file)
- BYU chocolate milk (completed file)
- Jason Welker, “Natural Monopoly and the Need for Government Regulation”
Things you should know for Exam 2
Institutions, power, and inequality
You should understand…
- …why institutions matter for public administration, policy, and governance
- …the strengths and weaknesses of and the and general differences between three main theoretical approaches to institutions: institutions as rational behavior, institutions as constraints, and institutions as temporary equilibria
- …the difference between informal and formal institutions
- …why informal institutions exert influence over our actions even if they’re not officially codified
- …the difference between self-enforcing, self-reinforcing, and self-undermining institutions
- …the role of path dependency in the emergence of institutions
- …how inequality is measured and why we should care about inequality (Gini coefficients vs. 90:10 ratios)
- …how to calculate absolute and comparative advantage and determine the potential gains from trade
Games and simulations played in class
- Pólya’s Urn: example of path dependency
- International trade game: example of natural institutional emergence, the importance of initial allocations of resources, and the distribution of bargaining power
Market and government failures
You should understand…
- …the difference between private goods, club goods, common pool resources, and public goods (and how they can be classified as (non)rivalrous and (non)excludable)
- …what a market failure is
- …what a government failure is
- …what public goods are and how governments, the private sector, and the third sector can address them
- …what common pool resources (CPRs) are and how governments, the private sector, and the third sector can address them
- …the difference between social and private marginal cost (supply) and marginal benefit (demand)
- …what externalities are and how governments, the private sector, and the third sector can address them
- …what Coasian bargaining is, when it is advantageous, and why it sometimes fails
- …how cap and trade systems can fix externalities (and when they can’t)
- …how Pigouvian taxes can fix externalities (and when they can’t)
- …how regulation can fix externalities (and when and why it can’t)Remember the peanut butter regulation story—regulation is never strictly economic or mathematical
- …why not everything should be a market
- …why large groups suffer from free riding and how they work to behave like small groups
- …how small factions threaten democracy, but also how they enable it
- …how voting can suffer from failures (Condorcet’s paradox)
- …the difference between income and assets
- …why shared national identity and strong horizontal networks of institutions are important for a country’s social and economic wellbeing
- …how inequitable public policies lead to decreased public goods provision, unequal institutional access, and increased ethnofractionalization
- …why slavery has had lasting institutional impacts on the economic system of today and how government policies have contributed to these consequences (specifically in housing and education)