Midterm Exam — Instructions

Overview

This is the scored midterm for Principles of Microeconomics. It checks the first half of the course, Weeks 1 to 7. That means scarcity, opportunity cost, and the frontier of what an economy can make (the PPF); comparative advantage and the gains from trade; demand, supply, and market equilibrium; elasticity; and surplus, price controls, taxes, and subsidies.

The midterm has 25 questions, and every question counts the same. Most of them, 20 in all, ask you to select exactly one option. Three ask you to select every option that applies, and two ask you to judge a statement true or false. Every graph a question needs is described in words, with its demand and supply rules written out on one line. Every number you need is printed in the question, and nothing depends on a picture or a color.

Each question asks for a skill you have already used in the weekly quizzes, lecture tutorials, and Model Workshops. You name the curve that moves and which way it moves, solve for a price and a quantity, run one calculation and read the result in a plain sentence, or sort a claim as positive or normative. Nothing on the midterm comes from outside Weeks 1 to 7.

Coverage and scope

The syllabus sets the midterm's scope as Objectives 1 to 4 as taught in Weeks 1 to 7. The form you will sit draws all 25 of its questions from the Weeks 1 to 7 question bank. Here is what the drawn form holds, objective by objective, with the weeks its questions come from and the skills those weeks taught:

• Scarcity and trade (Objective 1, 8 questions): 3 from Week 1, 3 from Week 2, 1 from Week 3, and 1 from Week 4. From Week 1, review opportunity cost, which counts time and forgone earnings as well as money. Review the PPF, too: points on, inside, and outside the frontier, the slope as opportunity cost, and the bowed-out shape as rising opportunity cost. Then review economic models and ceteris paribus, microeconomics against macroeconomics, and positive against normative statements. From Week 2, review absolute against comparative advantage, the opportunity-cost table built one ratio at a time, the terms of trade and the mutually beneficial range, and the before-and-after table that proves the gains from trade. Weeks 3 and 4 kept using Week 1's modeling habits on demand and supply, so a question on them can come from those weeks.
• Supply and demand (Objective 2, 4 questions): 2 from Week 3, 1 from Week 4, and 1 from Week 6. From Week 3, review the law of demand, the movement along a curve against a shift of the curve, the determinants of demand, and market demand as a sum. From Week 4, review the determinants of supply, solving Qd = Qs for the equilibrium, shortages and surpluses, comparative statics, and simultaneous shifts. Week 6 came back to the equilibrium itself, so one equilibrium question comes from that week.
• Elasticity (Objective 3, 6 questions): all 6 from Week 5. Review price elasticity computed with the midpoint formula, its sign and its magnitude, and the line between elastic, inelastic, and unit-elastic demand. Review the total-revenue test and why elasticity is not the slope. Then review income elasticity for normal and inferior goods, the cross-price sign for substitutes and complements, and what makes demand more or less responsive to price.
• Surplus and government intervention (Objective 4, 7 questions): 4 from Week 6 and 3 from Week 7. From Week 6, review willingness to pay and willingness to sell, consumer, producer, and total surplus summed from a ladder and read as triangles, the efficient number of trades, and efficiency against equity. From Week 7, review binding and nonbinding ceilings and floors, the shortage or surplus each one leaves, and the deadweight loss. Review the per-unit tax's wedge, too: the buyer price, the seller price, the quantity, the revenue, who bears the tax, and the lost triangle.

By week, the 25 questions come out like this:

Week 5 holds the most questions of any single week, 6 of the 25, and every one of them is on elasticity. Put real review time there: the midpoint formula step by step, the sign and the magnitude, the revenue test, and the income and cross-price signs. Scarcity and trade carries the most questions of any objective, 8, spread across Weeks 1 to 4. Surplus and government intervention comes next with 7, then elasticity with 6, and supply and demand has 4. By difficulty, 11 questions are easy, 10 are medium, and 4 are hard.

Week 8 adds no question to the midterm. Its review of the one graph and the one calculation each topic asks for covers the same Weeks 1 to 7 material. Its one new topic, thinking at the margin, is taught and practiced in the Week 8 chapter, practice set, and discussion, and it returns in the firm weeks; no midterm question comes from it.

These notes map the skills the midterm checks. The questions themselves are drawn from the course's question bank and are not listed here.

Instructions

• Attempts: one. The midterm is a single scored attempt.
• Time limit: there is no time limit. Take the time you need, as long as you submit before the exam closes.
• Window: the midterm opens in the Week 8 module and closes at the due time your instructor sets. Start early enough to finish comfortably inside that window.
• Navigation: the questions appear one at a time, and once you move on you cannot go back to an earlier question. Settle each one before you move to the next.
• Materials: every demand rule, supply rule, schedule, and graph description a question needs is printed in the question. Scratch paper helps for solving two equations or laying out a midpoint calculation one step to a line. The syllabus sets no rule on notes, calculators, or other materials, so follow what your instructor announces before the midterm opens.
• After you submit: Canvas shows your score. The keyed choices stay hidden so the midterm stays fair for every student.

Academic integrity

The midterm is an individual, scored assessment, and it is closed to AI. Do not use a chatbot or any other AI tool, do not get help from another person, and do not share or post the questions during or after your attempt. The course syllabus closes the midterm to AI, requires it to be entirely your own work, and names using AI on the midterm as one of the three violations that matter most in this course. The midterm confirms that you personally can solve the models, read the graphs, and interpret the results.

The honest way to prepare is open to you. The study guide, the practice exam, and the exam-prep tutorial rehearse the same skills with fresh variants, and nothing on them appears on the midterm word for word.

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