Mgec

Managerial Economics: Term 1, 2014-2015

Instructors 1. Mudit Kapoor Office tel - 7130 Location: AC 8 Level 1 Email: Mudit_Kapoor@isb.edu Office Hours: By appointment Learning Goals: The course is intended to teach you the process of critical and integrative thinking. Methodology: Towards meeting the learning goals, the course introduces you to the economist’s way of thinking about problems and making decisions. Some of you may take to the methodology like ducks to water, others will find it bitter medicine. In both cases, you will hopefully learn to appreciate the methodology and likely alter the way you look at the world and what you do. A central component of economics methodology involves running controlled thought experiments called models. These are toy versions of real situations in which the less critical aspects of the problem are stripped away to focus on understanding the primary issue under consideration. Beyond appreciating this technique, learning economics necessarily entails engagement and arguments with the logic. Most importantly, we do NOT offer a laundry list of facts to be learnt by rote – otherwise, there would be no need for a course. This course in managerial economics will use the above-mentioned methodology to focus on decision-making in business situations. Managers regularly address issues ranging from pricing, cost determination, compensation, entry into and exit from markets, and output decisions. At the end of the course, you will have the basic tools that structure these problems for optimal decisionmaking and, more importantly, develop an intuition for analyzing economic problems. This is a problem-oriented course. We recognize that as a manager, you will seldom be asked for your intuition and (almost certainly) never asked for a formal proof, but you will be asked to price services, determine how much material to produce, make decisions to invest, etc. While, the problems differ from one context to another, intuition and the logic...