May 10, 2024  
2023-2024 General Catalog 
    
2023-2024 General Catalog
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ECN 130 - Principles of Microeconomics


Last Date of Approval: Fall 2019

3 Credits
Total Lecture Hours: 45
Total Lab Hours: 0
Total Clinical Hours: 0
Total Work-Based Experience Hours: 0

Course Description:
This course will examine how consumers make decisions, firms maximize profits, and how various market structures affect price and output decisions of firms. Topics include supply and demand, elasticity, consumer and producer surplus, production and costs, and market structures. This course will prepare students for careers in business, accounting, and any type of career where critical thinking is vital.

Recommended(s): This course serves as an introduction to the field, with no former economics coursework required. Economics courses at Iowa Central are not sequenced, so you may take Macroeconomics ECN 120, or Microeconomics ECN 130 in any order. There is a small amount of overlap between courses as each begins with the most basic principles.
Prerequisites/Corequisites: None

Mode(s) of Instruction: traditional/face-to-face, and/or online

Credit for Prior Learning: There are no Credit for Prior Learning opportunities for this course.

Course Fees: ebook/Access Code: $124.99 (charged once per term for all courses that use Cengage Unlimited)

Common Course Assessment(s): All sections have common assessments.

Student Learning Outcomes and Objectives:
Student Learning Outcomes:

  • Assess opportunity cost and tradeoffs in making choices about how to use scarce resources.
  • Analyze the role of markets and prices in the U.S. economy.
  • Explain why societies develop economic systems, identify the basic features of economic systems, and analyze the major features of the US economy.
  • Analyze the role of core economic institutions and incentives in the US economy.
  • Analyze the different types of market structures and the effect they have on the price and quantity of the goods and services produced.

Course Objectives: After the successful completion of the course students will:

  • Be able to understand supply and demand including elasticity
  • Be able to define the costs of production–explicit costs, implicit costs, normal profit, and economic profit
  • Be able to compare and contrast the characteristics of the four market models
  • Be able to identify when an individual firm would maximize profit, breakeven, or shut down
  • Have the ability to compute the various revenues and costs of an individual firm
  • Understand the resource markets and the incomes generated–wages, rent, interest, and profit
  • Be able to explain the role of gover



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