Week 7 — Readings & Resources

Course: Principles of Microeconomics (ECON 1) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Kessler
Focus: Government Intervention: Price Controls, Taxes & Subsidies · Objective 4

Everything below is a link to a free external resource — nothing is embedded, copied, or downloaded. Links were verified live at build time; if one ever rots, the per-term update re-checks them. (Canvas: a Page of links + ExternalUrl module items.)

📖 Read (≈25 min)

1. OpenStax, Principles of Microeconomics 3e — Ch. 3, "Demand and Supply" § "Price Ceilings and Price Floors"
   🔗 https://openstax.org/details/books/principles-microeconomics-3e
   Covers binding vs. non-binding controls, shortage vs. surplus, and worked diagrammatic examples. The core reading for Part 1 of this week.

2. OpenStax, Principles of Microeconomics 3e — Ch. 7, "Production, Costs, and Industry Structure" — and related sections on taxes and subsidies
   🔗 https://openstax.org/details/books/principles-microeconomics-3e
   Read the OpenStax coverage of tax incidence and deadweight loss (search "tax" in the chapter list). Incidence diagrams and the DWL triangle are fully worked.

3. Khan Academy — Microeconomics → "Consumer and producer surplus; market interventions and deadweight loss."
   🔗 https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microeconomics
   Short articles + practice problems on price controls, tax incidence, and DWL. Self-check as you go.

▶️ Watch (≈15 min)

4. CrashCourse Economics #19 — "Price Controls, Subsidies, and the Risks of Good Intentions." (Adriene Hill & Jacob Clifford)
   🔗 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtPNZwz5_o_5uirJ8gQXnhEO
   Episode 19 of the playlist — price ceilings, price floors, and subsidies with real-world examples. ≈10 min.

5. Marginal Revolution University (MRU) — Principles of Economics: Microeconomics, unit on "The Effects of a Tax."
   🔗 https://mru.org/courses/principles-economics-microeconomics
   Tyler Cowen & Alex Tabarrok cover tax incidence, the wedge diagram, and DWL. Watch the 2–3 clips in the taxes section.

🛠️ Tools for this week (links only)

6. Desmos Graphing Calculator — you'll graph both supply curves (pre- and post-tax) side by side in the Workshop.
   🔗 https://www.desmos.com/calculator
   Plot y = 20 − 0.5x (demand), y = 4 + 0.5x (original supply), and y = 8 + 0.5x (tax-shifted supply) to see the wedge visually.

7. FRED — Federal Reserve Economic Data — for real minimum-wage and CPI data referenced in Discussion 7.
   🔗 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/
   Search "federal minimum wage" or "CPI" if you want to ground the discussion in verified data.

Why these earn the click: OpenStax Ch. 3 and Ch. 7 are the text backbone; CrashCourse and MRU give the same ideas in motion; Khan Academy provides self-check practice on incidence and DWL; Desmos is your graphing lab for the Workshop.