PMAP 8141 Microeconomics for Public Policy

Course Description

The public sector is complex. Public administrators, managers, and policy makers need to be fluent in the language of economics and need to be able to engage in and understand quantitative analysis of social policies.

In this class, you’ll learn how to understand, speak, and do economics.

By the end of this course, you will (1) be literate in fundamental economic principles, (2) understand the limits of economic theory and free markets, (3) justify government and nonprofit intervention in the economy, and (4) make informed policy recommendations by analyzing and evaluating public sector policies. Specifically, you’ll be able to:

• Understand the principles of microeconomics, public economics, and behavioral economics
• Explain social phenomena using economic vocabulary and reasoning
• Predict how individuals respond to incentives
• Justify government intervention in the free market and identify when public policies have been unethical or failures
• Propose and argue for public and nonprofit sector policies