Current Announcements |
| 12/25/07 |
Answers to the 8 versions of the Final Exam are now available on the Exam Answers link to the left. Your EC101 B1 question booklets will be available in the Principles Center (the Dungeon) when the University opens in January. |
| 12/20/07 |
Your Aplia Average (with the worst 2 scores dropped), your Discussion-Section Score (0 to 10, set by your TA, based on attendance and participation), your Course Average and Course Grade are now posted under the Check Your Grades link on the left. (The Total Score listed there by the BU website software has no meaning, so please ignore it.) The Course Grade is based on the Course Average. No letter grades are assigned to any other score--only the numerical results are used.
Please understand that with 403 students in my two lectures, there is never a significant gap between scores that can be used to separate course grades. For example, the following is the actual series of course averages last year near the B–/C+ borderline:
| 80.21 |
B- |
| 80.14 |
B- |
| 80.08 |
B- |
| 80.07 |
B- |
| 79.94 |
C+ |
| 79.92 |
C+ |
| 79.89 |
C+ |
| 79.86 |
C+ |
| 79.84 |
C+ |
There will always be students just below the borderlines no matter where I place them. Therefore I always put them exactly at the official points, A 93.0, A- 90.0, B+ 87.0, B 83.0, B- 80.0, C+ 77.0, C 73.0, C- 65.0 and D 55.0. |
| 12/20/07 |
Your Final Exam scores are now posted under the Check Your Grades link (on the left). You will see something like this:
4 32 76.7
80.0
These data represent the exam version, the raw score, the percentage score, and the adjusted score (the Total Score has no meaning, so please ignore it.). I added an average of 3 percentage points to the scores to those who took the B1 final exam, and an average 5 percentage points to those who took the E1 final exam (which was a little more difficult). The adjustments vary a bit, because I reduced the variance of the result. This means that those with high scores received smaller adjustments and those with low scores received larger ones. |
| 12/18/08 |
The EC101 E1 exam will take place tomorrow (Friday) in Morse Auditorium (MOR 101), 9-11am. I suggest that you arrive by 8:45. Grades for both EC101 B1 and E1 will be posted together by Sunday evening. |
| 12/11/08 |
Last year's final exam is now posted as the Final Practice Exam. Answers are on the last two pages. Please complete the exam before you check your answers. This year, you will not be responsible for questions on interest rates. |
| 12/10/08 |
Tomorrow (Thursday) is the last day of classes. I will complete my lecture on externalities and pollution, and then answer student questions about the material (but please do not waste time asking “What's going to be on the exam?” Answer: everything). There will be no additional slides aside from what I have already posted. You will not be responsible for the chapter on the economics of information, though I recommend it to interested students. The Lecture Schedule has been updated to reflect these changes. |
12/7/08 |
The lecture-slide outlines for Tuesday, December 9, are now available. I suggest that you print them and bring them to class. |
12/3/08 |
Because we are behind, I have changed the lecture schedule. Please check the new one here. |
| 11/24/08 |
Tomorrow's lecture on faculty research is optional––attendance is not required. There are NO discussion sections this week. |
| 11/7/08 |
Your exam score is available on the Check Your Grades link (on the left). For Midterm 2, you will see something like this:
2 32 80.0 87.5
These data represent the exam version, the number correct (out of 40), and the percentage score and the adjusted percentage score. I adjusted the score by adding 3 correct questions (7.5 percentage points) to everyone's result. One of the additions was meant to compensate for Q4 on v1,3 or Q29 on v2,4 which almost everyone answered incorrectly. The other two additions were to compensate for the overall difficulty of the exam. The mean adjusted score was 77.5.
If you see the value “Total Points,” please ignore it: it's a meaningless value reported by the secure website. |
| 11/4/08 |
The correct answers for the multiple choice questions of Midterm 2 (according to Manove  Happy.gif) ) are posted here. |
| 11/4/08 |
The Midterm 2 practice exam is now posted with answers on the last page. My suggestion: do not look at the answers before you have completed the entire exam. |
| 11/2/08 |
Terminology: Your textbook often uses the term buyer's reservation price instead of the more common term, willingness to pay (WTP). The textbook also uses the term seller's reservation price instead of the simpler and more common term reservation price, with the word seller omitted. This difference in wording does not affect the meaning of the concepts. |
| 10/29/08 |
The Lecture Schedule (link on the left) and reading assignments have been updated again. Check it out to guide your studies for the midterm exam. |
10/29/08 |
The lecture-slide outlines for tomorrow (Thursday) are now available. I suggest that you print them and bring them to class. |
| 10/25/08 |
My lecture on cost curves left many students confused. Click here to examine a new slide that may help you understand the ideas. I will review the new slide in class. |
| 10/22/08 |
Office hours are changed just for this Friday: 10-10:45 and 2-3:15. |
| 10/13/08 |
Willingness-to-Pay Clarification:
Willingness to pay (WTP) is the maximum you would pay. If WTP = $60 you would not be willing to pay $61. Of course, you would be happy to pay only $50.
If Emily has no plums, how much is she willing to pay for a bag of 5 plums? We can find out by adding up her WTP for each of the first five plums.
See Clarification slide-outlines. |
| 9/17/08 |
Manove's thoughts on “legal tender.” |
| 5/1/08 |
On Thursday, October 25, 2007,
walking through Brookline on my way to EC101,
I was attacked by a nasty wild turkey.
| Taken with my cell phone just before he attacked. |
 |
|
As an economist, should I have tried
to catch and eat
this turkey
instead of running away like a sissy?
Take my course and find out.
Read about wild turkeys in Brookline. |
| 9/17/08 |
Manove's thoughts on “legal tender.”
Dear Students,
I said in class that people accept intrinsically useless paper money in exchange for useful goods, because they know everyone else will accept the paper money, and not because the money has the status of legal tender. Many of you disagreed with me, as did several of the Teaching Fellows.
I have tried to do some reading on this question, and it is certainly more complicated than I had realized. But two things are clear to me:
1) The widespread acceptance of a given currency is what economists call a Nash equilibrium. If everyone else accepts a particular form of money as payment for purchases, it makes sense for you to accept it as well--doing otherwise would raise your transaction costs. Such an equilibrium tends to be self-sustaining once it has been reached.
2) If a particular currency has the status of legal tender, then it is more likely that the currency will, in fact, reach an equilibrium of the type described above. The status of legal tender immediately gives the currency a value: e.g., for the payment of taxes and sometimes for the payment of debts.
When the euro was first circulated in the euro zone, creditors had no way to force the repayment of debts if they refused to accept the euro at the legally fixed rate of exchange with the previous currency. In Spain, for example, if a creditor asked a court to force repayment of a debt in pesetas (the previous currency) after the introduction of the euro, he would be unsuccessful even if the debt contract had been written in pesetas (at least that is my understanding). But this doesn't force people to accept euros in a spot sale: you offer a Spaniard euros for something, and he normally has the right to say “I don't want to do business with you.” You offer him pesetas, and he has the right to accept them if he wants. But because of its legal status, the euro became the equilibrium currency of the euro zone almost instantly the day it was introduced.
It's undeniable that US paper dollars are acceptable as payment (or even demanded) in many countries where the dollar is not legal tender.
--Michael
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