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Lecture 1

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)

14 views

Lecture 1

Uploaded by

AbdelRahman Walid

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Intro Slide

Business Economics Lecture 1:

Introduction to the Module
Staff
Staff information
information

Name- Alan Piper

Email- [email protected]

Office hour- Monday 9-10 G24 Maurice Keyworth Building

Staff
Staff information
information

Name- Henry Duncanson

Email- [email protected]

Office hour- Wednesday 10.30-11.30 1.06B 20 Lyddon Terrace

Lecture Topics
Lecture Topics and
and Sequence
Sequence
1. Module overview (Henry)
2. Basic game theory (Alan)
3. Risk (Alan)
4. Principal agent problem (Alan)
5. Incentives in contracts (Alan)
6. Hiring (Alan)
7. Perfect competition and Monopoly (Henry)
8. Bertrand (Henry)
9. Cournot (Henry)
10. Collusion (Henry)
11. Price discrimination (Henry)
Lectures
Lectures andand
lecturelecture
capture
capture
• These will be on campus in Esther Simpson (LG.08)

• The lectures will be lecture captured so you hopefully will be able to rewatch
them later.

• Lecture capture is best used a complement to the lectures. Lecture capture

gives you the opportunity to go over stuff you didn’t get first time round. It
should not be used as a substitute for attending the lecture.

• Last year lecture capture was not very reliable and for many weeks it did not
work at all or partially did not work. This may happen again and if it does there
will be NO replacement. It is your responsibility to attend lectures and make
notes of sufficient quality.

• Attendance at lectures is expected and this year the university will be

monitoring attendance much more closely. At the end of the lecture, we will go
through how it will work for this module.
Seminars
Seminars

• Seminar attendance is compulsory, and attendance will be recorded.

• These will be in week 3, 5, 7 and 9.

• Please check your timetables to make sure that you are allocated to a seminar
and to check when and where your seminar is.

• Please contact student education services and myself if making these

will not be possible for any reason. You will then be allocated to another
seminar that week.

• If you are unable to make a seminar throughout the week. You will need to
catch up the work. This will involve additional reading and time to work through
the questions. Once you have done this you should come to office hours to
check your understanding. It is your responsibility to attend seminars and if
you are sick, it is your responsibility to catch up. Office hours are not a one-to-
one seminar.
Coursework
Coursework information
information

• The coursework will contain two separate questions. There will be a question
from both halves of the course.

• Each question will have a strict word limit of 1000 words.

• The coursework questions will be released at the end of week 6.

• To do well in the coursework-

 Focus on application of the material course to the real world.
 DON’T try and cover everything in the course be selective.
 Do include academic evidence to support your points. Specifically,
regression coefficients.
 Make a judgement.
• To get ahead start doing research into a company. This company can be pretty much any
company. However, please note that it is a company not a government department or
charity. Football clubs or sports clubs can be used but the question from the second half
of the course is quite challenging in that case.
Coursework
Coursework last year information

• The average mark last year was 53.

• 7% of students got a first.

• A further 24% of students got an upper second.

Feedback
Feedback

• There will be opportunities for feedback throughout the course. These will
include verbal feedback in both the lectures and the seminars where I would
strongly encourage you to ask questions about the material that you are
struggling with and engage in debates about the application of this material to
the real world.

• Towards the end of term there will be an opportunity to submit an introduction

and conclusion for the coursework question to receive written feedback on this
work and really hone your essay skills.

• Feedback on the coursework will be on each question and will take the form of
the main reason for your mark and one area to focus on moving forward so a
skill which you need to improve upon in future essays. It will not take the form
of saying where marks have been added or removed.

• Once your feedback has been released you will be able to book a meeting with
Alan or I to discuss the feedback. Please don’t use the meetings to try to alter
your marks. This is not possible!
Marking
Marking processprocess

• All scripts will be first marked.

• Then a selection of scripts will be second marked including all fails and
borderline cases. If there are systematics anomalies here, then the entire
cohort will be remarked. If not, these marks will be submitted to the exam
board where another sample will be sent to an external examiner. Once the
external examiner is happy the marks will be confirmed.

• This process is not like A level and the criteria is very strict for a remark. There
must be a material problem with the marking. Most commonly that there are
multiple questions and they have been added up incorrectly. Please check this
when you get your feedback as you will get a mark per question. You will not
be awarded a remark because you think the mark is unfair.
Other
Other differences
differences with A levels with A
levels
• The student lecturer relationship. At A level it was you and your teachers
against the exam board. At university, your lectures write the exams. This
means that Alan and I will give you a set of tools to approach the exam, but
your talent and effort will be the main factors in achieving your goals. Our job is
to give you these tools not to make the exam as easy as possible.

• Depending on your A levels so of you may not have written an essay that
counted towards a qualification since GCSE. Don’t panic there will be help and
support in the Year 2 meetings.

• If you did do an essay-based A level, I am sure you are very familiar with the
strange mark schemes that they have. Please forget about those now. There
are no set number of points you need to make. Your coursework's will be
marked in a much more holistic manner. So, asking questions like “How many
points do I need?” is impossible to answer. For this module I would
recommend depth rather than breadth.
A.I.
A.I.

• A.I. is an incredibly powerful tool and can really benefit your learning. This can
come from giving you ideas to helping you evidence your ideas with theory or
empirics.

• However, A.I. also makes stuff up. Specifically references, if we find a bogus
reference in your coursework this will be a clear indication of plagiarism, and
the punishments will be very harsh. You should be reading any reference you
are citing so please don’t just assume that the description you have seen is
correct. This is true of other human authors as well.

• For your coursework don’t rely solely on A.I. If you do it will very likely mean
that you get a very low mark because there will be a lack of focus on the topics
and ideas that we have discussed in the course. Quite a few of the fails clearly
fell in to this category.
Textbooks
Textbooks

The three textbooks that might be useful for the course are-

• Dixit et al, Games of Strategy

• Besanko et al, Economics of Strategy

• Core Economics, The Economy

We will not be following any textbook closely and therefore I wouldn’t recommend
buying a textbook. Any microeconomics or game theory textbook will be very
useful. The Economy is a free interactive e-book but this textbook has a more
macroeconomic focus than this course. It is a good place to look up basic
concepts and examples.
Conclusion
Thank you very much for listening.