ECON 119
Fall 2024 Syllabus - Psychology and Economics
Catalog Course Description. This course presents psychological and experimental economics research demonstrating departures from perfect rationality, self-interest, and other classical assumptions of economics and explores ways that these departures can be mathematically modeled and incorporated into mainstream positive and normative economics. The course will focus on the behavioral evidence itself, especially on specific formal assumptions that capture the findings in a way that can be incorporated into economics. The implications of these new assumptions for theoretical and empirical economics will be explored.
Text. I will teach using slides that are intended to be “all-inclusive” . I will upload them to bcourses. If anything is unclear, try Googling it. Ido it all the time! If the web can’t fully clear something up, ask your classmates! If you need more assistance, come see me or your GSI during office hours.
Instructional Method and Attendance. I will mostly lecture, but there will be many instances of you interacting with your classmates (and me!) in class, so attendance and participation is expected and highly encouraged.
Prerequisites. You should have taken calculus because we will be taking derivatives in this class. We won’t be doing integration. Econ 100A (Microeconomics) is technically a prerequisite, but you will be OK if you haven’t taken it yet.
Lecture recordings. The GSIs and I decided not to have lectures recorded. We are concerned that recordings could reduce attendance and your attendance is good not just for you, but for others as well, since I like to keep the class buzzing during Neighbor Time. If you learn more effectively by listening to my lectures verbally on repeat, however, you may use your phone to record audio/video of me. You don’t need to ask. Just please do it discreetly so you don’t distract others.
Studying for Exams: We will write the exams and problem sets to try to have them look similar to each other. This means that your best preparation for exams is doing the problem sets and taking them seriously. If you understand how to solve the problem set exercises, you should be fine for exams.
Grading. Details of the following items will be discussed with sufficient time leading up to when they take place:
30% Midterm Exam #1 - Thursday, October 3rd (FIRST 90 minutes of class)
30% Midterm Exam #2 - Thursday, November 7th (FIRST 90 minutes of class) - will mostly cover material from after Midterm 1
30% Final Exam - Tuesday, December 17th 8–11 am [click here for link] - will mostly cover material from after Midterm 2
10% Problem Sets. On each problem set you turn in, you will be given a grade of “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory” . Problem sets that are late or not turned in at all are going to receive a grade of “unsatisfactory” . Problem sets are to be submitted online via bcourses. More details to follow.
Satisfactory problem sets must
• be written clearly so that we can see what you are doing
• show the work done to arrive at answers; not just the answers
• have all problems seriously attempted (the final answers do not all have to be correct, but you should have legitimately tried to work on every problem–the harder you try on the problem sets, the better shape you will be in for the course, both in terms of broadening what you understand, but also, in identifying what you don’t know)
Every satisfactory problem set earns you 1% in the class. Thus, to maximize your homework grade, you will need to have 10 satisfactory problem sets. I ask and advise you to take problem sets seriously. They are meant to prepare you for the exams. Solutions to the problem sets will be posted online. I suggest you work on problem sets individually or with others; do whatever helps you learn better. Of course, all students must write up and turn in their own problem sets.