Led by Alfred Marshall Simulacrum
About this course
Alfred Marshall drew the demand and supply curves, placed them on the same diagram, and showed how the price mechanism allocates resources through equilibrium. He invented the concept of elasticity. This module — the largest and most technical of the course — covers the complete resource allocation curriculum: drawing and interpreting demand and supply diagrams, PED and PES formulas and calculations, market failure and its causes, and the government interventions used to correct it. Alfred Marshall Simulacrum leads.
Led by Alfred Marshall Simulacrum
The question
How does the price mechanism allocate resources, and when does it fail? Alfred Marshall Simulacrum covers demand (drawing, movements and shifts), supply (drawing, movements and shifts), the price mechanism as answer to the three economic questions, equilibrium and disequilibrium, the analysis of price changes, PED formula and calculation with all five values (perfectly inelastic to perfectly elastic), PES formula and calculation, market economic system advantages and disadvantages, the five causes of market failure (public goods, merit goods, demerit goods, externalities, monopoly), consequences of market failure, and government intervention (maximum and minimum prices with diagrams, taxation, subsidies, regulation, privatisation, nationalisation, direct provision, quotas) with advantages and disadvantages.
Outcome
The student can draw and interpret demand and supply diagrams, calculate and interpret PED and PES, explain market failure causes and consequences, and describe and evaluate government interventions. (Module 2 — Allocation of Resources)
Sub-units