MBA 525 Managerial Economic Analysis

Spring 2020

Dale Lehman

 

Office:  Chapel Basement;  Dale.Lehman@loras.edu, 563-588-7725

The course meets Tuesday evenings, 6:30-8:30PM, March-May

Course Objective and Description: 

"Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work - whereas economics represents how it actually does work."

                    - Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics

On the other hand, there is an old joke about economists:  "How can you tell the economist walking down the street?  He's the one who doesn't bend over to pick up the $20 bill lying on the sidewalk - he thinks 'if it were real, then somebody would have already picked it up!'"

This course is about economic principles and their relevance to business decision making.  We will explore the interaction of information, economic incentives and market competition and how these interact to determine prices, products available, profits, and patterns of trade and organization.  This course is experiential:  there will be a number of simulations as well as a chance to enter an international competition.
The course will focus around a competitive simulation.  The simulation is designed to highlight the three keys to making good economic decisions:  understand your demand, understand your cost structure, and think in terms of competitive dynamics.

Textbook:

Managerial Economics by Stengel (Harvard Business School coursepack)..

Grading: 

Grades will be based on a combination of homework exercises, simulation performance, and group performance in the strategy simulation.  There will be at least 4 experiments (with grades based on performance), one group competition (ending on April 9) and another group competition (in class, mostly over the final weekend).  The experiments will comprise 20% of the grade, the first group simulation 30%, and the final group simlulation will be the remaining 50% of the grade.

Outline:  available on eLearn