Syllabus
Updated A.Y. 2025-2026
Numbers in parentheses refer to chapter numbers in The Economy 2.0: Microeconomics by The CORE Team.
The book if freely available HERE . Extensions will not be covered unless otherwise stated
Unit 1: Prosperity, inequality, and planetary limits
Measuring Wellbeing: climate change and inequality (1.1-1.4)
"Hockey-stick" growth (1.5-1.7)
The role of capitalism in economic growth (1.8-1.10, 1.12)
Economics and the biosphere (1.13)
Unit 2: Technology and incentives
Decision making (2.2)
Technologies and innovation (2.3-2.7, including extensions)
Economic models (2.8, 2.10)
Capitalism and climate change (2.11)
Unit 3: Scarcity, wellbeing, and working hours
Scarcity and choice (3.1-3.4, including extensions)
Decision-making under scarcity(3.5-3.6, including extensions)
Income and substitution effects (3.7 including extension)
Is it a good model? (3.8)
Applications to the real world (3.9-3.12)
Unit 4: Strategic interactions and social dilemmas
Game theory (4.1-4.2)
Types of equilibrium (4.3-4.4)
Evaluating outcomes (4.5)
Social Preferences (4.6-4.7, including extensions)
Repeated interactions (4.8-4.9)
Sequential and coordination games (4.10-4.14, including extensions)
Unit 5: The rules of the game: who gets what and why?
Institutions and power (5.1-5.3)
A model to study institutions (5.4)
The distribution of income (5.5-5.14)
Unit 6: The firm and its employees
The workers and the firm (6.1-6.3)
Jobs, vacancies, hiring and quitting (6.4-6.6, including extensions)
Employment rents and the labour discipline model (6.7-6.9)
The wage setting model (6.10-6.11, including extensions)
Power and wages (6.12-6.14)
Unit 7: The firm and its customers
Prices, quantities and costs (7.1-7.4, including extensions)
Demand, Elasticity and revenue (7.5, including extensions)
Profits and surplus (7.6-7.7, including extensions)
Competition and product differentiation (7.8-7.9)
Markets with few firms (7.10-7.12)
Unit 8: Supply and demand: Markets with many buyers and sellers
Demand, supply and market clearing price (8.1-8.2)
Competitive equilibrium and gains from trade (8.3-8.5, including extensions)
Changes in supply and demand (8.6, including extensions but only the linear case))
Short run and long run equilibria (8.7-8.8)
Supply, demand and competitive equilibrium: Is this a good model? (8.10-8.11)
Taxes and Price controls (8.12-8.13)
Unit 9: Lenders and borrowers and differences in wealth
Money, income and wealth (9.1-9.2)
Borrowing: Bringing future consumption to present (9.3-9.5)
Lending: Moving consumption to the future (9.6-9.7)
Conflicts over the gains made possible by borrowing and lending (9.8)
Borrowers and lenders: A principal–agent problem (9.9)
How good is the model? (9.11)
Limited wealth (9.12-9.13)
Unit 10: Market successes and failures: The societal effects of private decisions
Private and social costs and benefits (10.1-10.2, including extensions but only the quasi-linear case)
Solving the problem (10..3-10.4, including extensions)
Externalities (10.5)
Public goods (10.6-10.7)
Asymmetric information: Principal–agent relationships, and market failures (10.8-10.10)
The limits of markets (10.11)