Week 8 · Readings & resources

Week 8 — Readings & Resources

Principles of Microeconomics Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 8 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 59–67 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu for a fuller review before the midterm, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (19–21 min total)

① Solve the market and shift a curve

Chapter 8, Section “Solve the market: Qd = Qs and the shortage” · Session 1, Segment 3, “Equilibrium: one crossing, one solve” · Remember: at the equilibrium price quantity demanded equals quantity supplied; below it there is a shortage, and above it a surplus.

Market Equilibrium — Economics Mafia — a short animated recap of an apple market: the price where buyers and sellers want the same amount is the equilibrium, a lower price leaves a shortage that pushes the price up, and a higher price leaves a surplus that pushes it down. It closes by naming the competitive-market assumption that no single seller sets the price. When it says more sellers enter as the price rises, read that as sellers moving along the supply curve. (video, 4 min) (captions: creator)
Supply and Demand Curve Practice Problem — Think Econ — an ice cream market where a cheaper input shifts supply right and a heat wave shifts demand right. It draws both cases, one where demand shifts more and one where supply shifts more, to show that quantity rises for certain while the price cannot be signed without the sizes of the shifts. That is the same warning the chapter attaches to two shifts at once. Use it as one more practice case while completing the Week-8 module overview. (video, 6 min) (captions: automatic)

② Taxes and the lost triangle

Chapter 8, Section “Run controls and taxes: the gap, the wedge, and the lost triangle” · Session 1, Segment 7, “Controls and taxes: the gap, the wedge, the lost triangle” · Remember: a per-unit tax splits the buyer price from the seller price, shrinks the quantity traded, and its revenue is a transfer, not the loss.

Supply and Demand with Tax — Economics in Many Lessons — a step-by-step solve with its own two equations: find the equilibrium without a tax, put a per-unit tax on sellers, write the seller's price as the buyer's price minus the tax, and solve again for the buyer price, the seller price, and the smaller quantity. It ends by splitting the tax into the buyers' share and the sellers' share. This builds on Week 7's work with a per-unit tax and who bears it. One slide near the end shows a typing slip in the seller's price; the spoken numbers are the ones to follow. (video, 6 min) (captions: automatic)
A Long-Running Debate About the Economic Efficiency of Presents — American Economic Association — a short research-news article on what happens when a gift is worth less to the person who gets it than it cost the giver: the gap is a deadweight loss, value one side loses that no one else gains. It reports a survey of students' holiday gifts that found such a gap, later studies that found gifts worth more than they cost, and the argument that givers gain something too, so economists still disagree. Its percentages come from particular surveys and are not figures this course uses; read it for the idea, then compare it with the chapter's 10-dollar triangle, where a tax stops trades that buyers and sellers both valued. (reading, 6–8 min)

③ Decide one unit at a time

Chapter 8, Section “Think at the margin: the café's extra hours” · Session 2, Segment 8, “Thinking at the margin: the café's extra hours” · Remember: do one more unit while its marginal benefit is at least its marginal cost, and stop at the first unit that costs more than it adds.

Marginal Analysis, Roller Coasters, Elasticity, and Van Gogh: Crash Course Economics #18 — CrashCourse — a fast tour of marginal analysis: a business hiring one more worker, a city deciding whether a fourth park is worth its land and tax money, and an amusement-park visitor weighing one more ride against the wait. It then reads demand as a marginal-benefit curve and supply as a marginal-cost curve, and closes with a review of elasticity using gasoline and pizza. In the pizza part one spoken line says the price would fall a lot where it means the quantity. (video, 12 min) (captions: creator)
Marginal Cost and Marginal Benefit. Why we never seem to run out of oil. — Economics Mafia — an animated short that reads the supply curve as the extra cost of one more unit of rice and the demand curve as the extra benefit of one more bowl, then steps through units one at a time to show why buyers and sellers stop where the two meet. Stop here before its oil example leans on how a firm's costs rise; next week takes up production and costs. (video, 6 min) (captions: creator)
How Buffet Economics Affects What We Can Eat — Econlife — a short economics column about all-you-can-eat restaurants. Its closing section on thinking at the margin defines the margin as the point where we decide whether we want something extra and gives two everyday cases: hiring one more worker by comparing the extra revenue with the extra wage, and sleeping 15 more minutes at the cost of breakfast. It then notes that one fixed price leads diners to eat more, while each extra plate adding less enjoyment than the last sets the limit, and shows the restaurant setting cheaper dishes beside costly ones and charging extra for drinks. Read the closing section first; the earlier supply and demand paragraphs carry cost and survey figures this course does not use, and the column's term diminishing marginal utility is one this course does not need. (reading, 4–6 min)

④ Leave spent money out

Chapter 8, Section “Leave out the sunk cost: the bridge to the firm weeks” · Session 2, Segment 9, “Sunk costs: what to leave out” · Remember: a sunk cost is the same whatever you choose next, so it never decides the next step.

Sunk Cost and Sunk Cost Fallacy — Economics in Many Lessons — a brief lecture with four short cases: a movie ticket already paid for, a forklift that can or cannot be resold, which separates a sunk cost from a cost you can still recover, a store with a nonrefundable lease deciding whether to open one more day, and bread about to go stale priced below what the store paid for it. The lease case is the café's rent question in another setting. (video, 4 min) (captions: automatic)
Why Wait Times and a Supersonic Airplane Are Similar — Econlife — a short economics column that pairs the supersonic Concorde, a money-losing jet that kept flying for decades after its huge development cost was spent, with airline callers who stay on hold for hours because of the time they have already waited. Both, it argues, let a cost that is gone shape the next choice, when only the costs and benefits still ahead should count. One caution as you read: after a long wait, the chance that the next few minutes get you through can be a real forward-looking reason to hold, which is not the same as counting the time already lost. (reading, 3–5 min)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

Margins and Thinking at the Margin — Econlib — a guide page that collects short explanations of what economists mean by marginal, with examples such as one more hour of weeding and a parking choice where the time already spent searching is sunk. Read the introduction and the definitions and basics; skip the history and the advanced resources, including the slope-as-derivative note, which this course does not need. (reading, 8–10 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

Provenance: Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com