22SU: EC202: Microeconomics

Initial post

Share some news article or current event that illustrates an important idea from class or that can be analyzed using ideas or tools from class and write a brief description of your economic reasoning. Try to use supply and demand or marginal cost and benefit curves.

Make sure the class can access any article you share (no pay wall).

Do not go looking for "economic" news; one thing you should have taken from your study so far is that economics is not specifically about business or trade policy but is a framework for analyzing human choices. I am an economist, and I study contraceptive policies (abortion restrictions, laws that determine whether physicians can prescribe the pill to minors, etc.). Look instead for news that interests you and then think about how to apply supply and demand or marginal cost and marginal benefit to make sense of that news or to predict how it might affect people's choices.

Do not use any of these:

• Macroeoconomic ideas from the end of chapter 1 (including reasons for inflation)
• Stock prices
• A particular business closing or opening

Further discussion

Discuss the news shared by other students using economic ideas. Specifically,

• Read at least two of the sources shared by classmates
• Engage thoughtfully with at least two classmates' posts
• Make at least one additional contribution to the discussion (for example, responding to responses to your post)

Examples of how to engage with classmates' posts:

• Do you think their use of supply and demand is correct? Why or why not?
• Can you think of any ways the effects of the event might be different in different scenarios? What about for different people?
• Can you apply any other economic ideas? For example, if someone describes a shift in supply, how might the elasticity of demand interact with that? Can you make any guesses about how elastic the demand is in this case?
• Can you find any relevant data? For example, can you find what happened to the price of a substitute good?