Week 6, Oct. 5, 9--Midterm review and exam

1. The exam will be given to you after class on Friday Oct. 2. It is individual work. You are not to collaborate with anyone else, but you can consult any materials we used for the class: books, articles, Zoom recordings, slides, class notes, as well as doing independent research. It's an open-book exam.

2. You will have a week to complete the exam. This process is designed to relieve some of the stress of a timed exam.

 

3. You will have to answer three or four essay questions with a strict word limit of 150 words. Answers should be direct, with data, evidence, reasons, the why, the how. 

 

4. There will be a graphic to draw and interpret.

5. You will email the completed exam to jbreiner@unav.es by noon on Friday Oct. 9, Pamplona time. There will be no class that day. 

 

6. Again, this work is to be done individually. You are not to collaborate with anyone else. You are on the honor system. I am trusting you to work individually. 

 

7. In class on Monday Oct. 5, I will have an exam review class in which you can ask me to review or clarify some concepts.

The following are some concepts and important people we talked about and read about. You will need to understand many of them to answer the questions on the exam. All of them are in materials we have used for the class.

Week 5, Sept. 28, Oct. 2, Money, banking, and interest rates

Readings for Sept. 28

From "The Economics Book".

p. 24 You don't have to barter when you have coins. The function of money. Location 366

p. 26 Make money from money. Financial services, Location 410

p. 30 Money causes inflation. Location 504

New: A recent podcast on the invention of paper money 1,000 years ago, and its meaning for today (transcript here).

* Recommended: A blockchain explainer, the technology behind cryptocurrencies 

Planet Money Summer School podcast: Advertising and Race. The podcast is here; the transcript is here. 

Blackrock Letter to CEOs: do more than just make a profit


In class exercise for Sept. 28, to be finished by Oct. 2

Work with the members of your work group: here is the list of groups and members.

Find the following interest rates for a bank in your home country or here in Spain and post them to this survey form in SurveyMonkey:

1. The interest rate paid to depositors by the bank. (Sometimes banks offer CDs, certificates of deposit, which pay a slightly higher rate for a 6-month commitment by the depositor.)
   
2. The interest rate that the bank charges customers for auto loans (4 or 5 years)
3. The interest rate that the bank charges on home mortgages (hipotecas), on a 30-year mortgage
4. The interest rate that the bank charges its credit card customers. (Don't just use the "teaser" rate or introductory rate.)
   

Use effective interest rate or TIE (tasa de interés efectiva), not nominal interest rate, or TIN (tasa de interés nominal). For example, if the nominal interest rate on a loan is 5%, but the interest is calculated monthly and added on to the monthly payment, the effective rate is 5.12%.

Week 4, Sept 21, 25: market failures, public goods, shared resources, externalities, monopolies

Homework readings Sept. 21 and 25

1. In  The Economics Book. All have to do with market failures: externalities, monopolies, imperfect competition, public goods, and shared resources.

• Private individuals never pay for street lights – provision of public goods and services, p. 46, Loc. 840-872.
• Phone calls are dearer without competition – monopolies, p.92, Loc. 1718-1811
• Make the polluter pay – external costs, p. 137, Loc. 2626-2637
• The biggest challenge for collective action is climate change – economics and the environment, p. 306, Loc. 5965-6045

2. The anti-monopoly case against Facebook, Google, and Amazon
3. European Union fines Google $2.7 billion for monopoly violations
4. Europe's anti-monopoly regulators take aim at how tech giants use data 

Recommended: Planet Money Summer School podcast, Scarcity and Pistachios

Pistachio growers in California use so much water, that entire communities have lost water service to in homes.
The podcast
The transcript of the podcast

Concepts:

• Tragedy of the commons
• Externalities
• Scarcity
• Cap and trade

 

Week 3, Sept. 14, 18: Introduction to markets: prices, supply and demand, rational man, invisible hand

 Readings for Monday, Sept. 14

Readings:

1. Economics Book, Prices come from supply and demand, p. 108-113, location 2025 - 2119 in the Kindle edition.

2. From The Economics Book   The Age of Reason", read the Intro, Man is a cold, rational calculator; and The Invisible hand of the market brings order. Loc. 884-1108 in Kindle, pp. 47-61 in print edition.

3. Chapter 3 of Mandel, Market Equilibrium and Shifts, in Contents in ADI.

Why you aren't paying more for bananas, but retailers are . Wall Street Journal article on how low prices on one item can drive people to choose one store over another.

The banana is one step closer to disappearing, National Geographic report on a fungus that is threatening Latin America. 

Recommended: Planet Money Summer School podcast, Markets and Pickles
The podcast
The transcript of the podcast
A food bank in Alaska gets sent a truckload of pickles, more than it could ever use. A food bank in Idaho gets sent a truckload of potatoes, the last thing it needs. With the help of economists, the food banks figure out a way to create a trading market, complete with information sharing and prices.
Concepts:

• Supply and demand
• Local knowledge problem
• Gains from trade
• Information asymmetry
• Monopoly
  

Exercise 2, Where are the jobs in Marketing?

The goal of this exercise is for you to see what the labor market is seeking from graduates in communication.

1. Create a document in Word

2. You will  search for a total of five items: either job advertisements for graduates in communication OR articles about the job market for graduates in Marketing. These can be in English or Spanish.

3. Put the links in the document along with the headline (in any language).

4. Make a list (in English) of the requirements and expectations they list most often in the job advertisements or the articles.

In other words, what are employers looking for? What kinds of skills? What kinds of abilities?

5. Upload the document to Exercise 2 in ADI. Due Friday Sept. 18.

Students who aren't on campus: form groups for the exercises

 Dear students who will be arriving late to campus or won't be on campus all semester, or are temporarily in quarantine, here are the names of other students in the same situation. I invite you to introduce yourselves via email and form groups. 

For Exercise 1, comparing online prices at Carrefour and Amazon, you will have to substitute a local retailer in one of the countries where you live. It might be hard to find exact equivalents. Do your best. 

Family names	Name	email	country
Alvarez Del Castillo Huerta	Camila	calvarezdel@alumni.unav.es	Mexico
Arenas García	Luisa Fernanda	larenasgarc@alumni.unav.es	Colombia
Arguello Valle	Gustavo	garguellova@alumni.unav.es	Nicaragua
Chelala Cortes	Emilio	echelalacor@alumni.unav.es	Mexico
Flores Galvez Cano	Sofia	sgalvezcano@alumni.unav.es	Guatemala
Genao Baez	Veronica	vgenaobaez@alumni.unav.es	Dominican Rep.
Madrigal Bejarano	Ignacio	imadrigalbe@alumni.unav.es	Costa Rica
Marusic Siles	Andrea	amarusicsil@alumni.unav.es	Bolivia
Montalvo Leon	Nathalie Victoria	nmontalvole@alumni.unav.es	Ecuador
Nufio Movil	María Inés	mnufiomovil@alumni.unav.es	Guatemala
Pérez Carvajal	Diego	dperezcarva@alumni.unav.es	Mexico
Rodriguez Carlos	Sophia	srodriguezc@alumni.unav.es	Venezuela
Saavedra Cardona	Paola María	psaavedraca@alumni.unav.es	El Salvador
Smith	Aaliyah	asmith.8@alumni.unav.es	USA
Sánchez De La Vega	Mariana	msanchezdel@alumni.unav.es	Colombia
Tapia Malpartida	Chiara	ctapiamalpa@alumni.unav.es	Italy
Ufer Girón	Sabine	sufergiron@alumni.unav.es	Germany
Navarrete Caldera	Carlos Eduardo	cnavarretec@alumni.unav.es	Nicaragua
Alcazar Salazar	Abraham	aalcazarsal@alumni.unav.es	Bolivia

Flores Vazquez                Paola                    pfloresvazq@alumni.unav.es  Mexico

Escudero                        Telmo                    tescuderoal@alumni.unav.es       Spain

Burusco                          Iñigo                     iburuscoald@alumni.unav.es       Spain

Calderon Garcia                Natalia                          ncalderonga@alumni.unav.es        Mexico

Arenas Garcia                    Andrea                        aarenasgarc@alumni.unav.es        Colombia 

Arias                                   Gerardo                        gariasmachu@alumni.unav.es        El Salvador 

Week 2, Private property, just prices, opportunity cost

 Readings for Monday Sept. 7.

The main book for this course, The Economics Book, is available in e-book format from Amazon for about 10 euros or dollars. A link to the book is in the right-hand column of this blog.
For Monday's class, please read in The Economics Book

• The introduction 
• Let the trading begin, p. 10, location 241
• Property should be private, p. 20, location 276
• What is a just price? p. 22, location 323

We will talk about the issues in class.

For your enjoyment: Economists study whether you should stay in a relationship with your boyfriend/girlfriend or look for someone else. What is the opportunity cost? The Planet Money Summer School podcast explores this issue as well as the sunk cost fallacy, marginal cost, and marginal benefit.

Exercise 1, due Friday, Sept. 11. 

Price comparisons, Amazon vs. Carrefour online and Carrefour in-store.

The goal of this exercise is to see if there are differences between in-store prices for certain goods and the price to have them delivered to your home.

1. Work in groups of two or three. Download the Exercise 1 document to your computer. 

2. Find 10 products on the Carrefour and Amazon websites: they could be electronics, clothing, food, pet products, etc.
3. Make sure they are identical or comparable in terms of quantity or size and quality. You might want to choose just one type of products: international foods, pet products, hardware and tools, cleaning products, men's clothing, women's clothing, etc.

4. Enter the price offered by Carrefour and Amazon. Make sure you choose the price they charge for home delivery. 

5. Then enter the price for the same item in the Carrefour store in Pamplona.

6. Compare the prices and add your observations at the end, along with the names of both participants.

7. Upload the spreadsheet or a PDF of the document to ADI

This assignment is due on Friday Sept. 11.