Syllabus for Econ 51

Basic Information

• Classes are Tuesday and Thursday, 10:30am-12:20pm, in 200-002. This is a synchronous course; please only enroll if you can make it to class at these times. Classes will not be recorded, and in-class polls will count as part of your grade.
• DO NOT SCHEDULE PERSONAL TRAVEL THAT CONFLICTS WITH EXAMS. There will be one required midterm, two optional one-hour “checkpoint exams,” and the final exam. The dates are as follows:
  • Midterm: Tuesday, October 13, in class
  • Game Theory Checkpoint 1: Wednesday, November 4, in the evening
  • Game Theory Checkpoint 2: Monday, November 16, in the evening
  • Final exam: Thursday, December 10, 3:30-6:30pm (time set by University)

  For evening Checkpoint exams, there will be two seatings offered: one at 5:30pm, and another at 7:00pm. We will be posting a form shortly so that you can let us know about which times you are available to take the Checkpoint exams, and if you have any unavoidable conflicts.

• If you are an athlete traveling on Stanford business, you should arrange to have an official traveling with the team administer your test. Please fill out this form for each test you will have to miss.
• If you have an OAE letter granting you extra time on exams, we will provide you with a link to upload it. (Please don’t email it to Professor Makler or your TA; they’ll just politely send you the link to the form.) Due to a flurry of last-minute requests, the OAE staff has requested us to impose a strict deadline of two weeks before any exam to submit an OAE letter. Rare exceptions for medical emergencies may be made at my discretion.
• Yes, the Econ 50 prerequisite is strictly enforced. You must take Econ 50 (or equivalent) before enrolling in Econ 51.

Teaching Team

Main lecture: Christopher R Makler, cmakler@stanford.edu.

There will be a “Q Club” section led by Josh Gross, jagross@stanford.edu. These sections will go into a bit more technical detail than the normal sections, and look at some more advanced applications. There are no additional homework problems for Q in 51, and the exams are all the same. So this is just for fun. :)

Additional TAs to be announced

Textbooks and Other Resources

This web page will have online lecture notes. I try to keep the readings short and focused on what you need to know coming into class, so there are a few additional resources you might find helpful if you want more exposition or more worked examples:

• For the first three weeks of class, Hal Varian’s Intermediate Microeconomics: A Modern Approach

• For the rest of the class, Joel Watson’s Strategy, 3rd Edition

These are the books I used to teach out of before I wrote my own notes, and they are much more thorough and polished than what I have written!

Schedule

Unit 1: Gains from Trade (weeks 1-3)

• Week 1: Consumer optimization from an endowment
• Week 2: Exchange economies and the Edgeworth Box
• Week 3: Production economies and comparative advantage
• Midterm: Tuesday, October 13, in class

Unit 2: Games of Complete Information

• Week 4: Introduction to Game Theory
• Week 5: Static Games and Nash Equilibrium
• Week 6: Dynamic Games and Subgame Perfect Nash Equilibrium
• Game Theory Checkpoint 1: Wednesday, November 4, in the evening

Unit 3: Games of Incomplete Information

• Week 7: Static Games of Incomplete Information
• Week 8: Dynamic Games of Incomplete Information
• Game Theory Checkpoint 2: Monday, November 16, in the evening

Unit 4: Asymmetric Information and Mechanism Design

• Week 9: Mechanisms to incentivize behavior
• Week 10: Mechanisms to extract information
• Final Exam: Thursday, December 10, 3:30-6:30pm

Class Meetings

Lectures

Lectures will be held Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:30am-12:20pm in 200-002.

Class will be in person. Please plan on attending all lectures, and please do not sign up for this class if it meets at the same time as another class. In general, recordings of lectures will not be available.

I have a strict no-electronics policy. Using electronics is distracting both for you and for those around you. Please not take your phone or laptop out during class. See below for rules about tablets.

Because you can’t use electronics, please come prepared to take notes on paper. If you must take notes on a tablet, you must sit in the front of the class, so that it’s clear that you’re taking notes and not doing other things and distracting those around you (not to mention me…and yes, it’s blindingly obvious when you are watching a movie on your iPad, even if you think you’re being subtle).

My goal with all of this is not to be draconian, but to create an environment that is as conducive to learning as possible. I’ll do everything I can to make the class worthy of your attention; thanks for doing your part in keeping us in a “good equilibrium.”

Sections

Sections will be held Thursday nights and Friday mornings. Sections are used to hone skills, go over old exam questions, and answer questions in small-group settings. Material presented in section is fair game for homework and exams; in fact, I often use problems from section as the basis for exam questions.

Graded Work

Grading in this course is done in absolute terms, not relative. It is possible for the entire class to earn A’s. (It is also possible for the entire class to earn B’s or C’s.) A spreadsheet will be provided to help you determine your grade in the class.

Pre-Lecture Quizzes (5% of your grade)

Each chapter will have a short quiz, delivered via Canvas, to help you “check your understanding” from the main concepts from the reading.

• Purpose: help you arrive in class fully prepared to absorb the material
• Due: 15 minutes before each lecture
• Scoring: percent of questions answered correctly, plus 20 percentage points (capped at 100; so 80% or above becomes 100%).
• Honor Code: You may work with other students on these quizzes. However, the questions will often be randomized, so be sure you’re answering your own question!

Class Participation (5% of your grade)

We will use PollEverywhere several times per class. This is both to help you gauge how well you’re following the material, and to help me understand whether I should speed up or slow down.

• Purpose: help you check your understanding of class material, and give an incentive to stay focused during class
• Scoring: percent of questions answered correctly, plus 20 percentage points (capped at 100; so 80% or above becomes 100%)
• Honor Code: it is a violation of the Honor Code to answer a PollEverywhere question if you are not physically in class. From time to time I will put up a question and tell those in the room to answer it in a certain way, to detect cheating.

Note: You must be logged into PollEverywhere using your Stanford account to get credit for your in-class questions. I strongly recommend using the PollEverywhere app on your phone, rather than logging in each time – otherwise you may have trouble logging in and not be able to answer questions. If you have consistent problems logging on, please contact Classroom Technology Support.

Homework (25% of your grade)

There will be ten problem sets. Most are due Saturday and cover the previous week’s lectures. The exceptions are the homework for weeks 6 and 9, which are shifted a bit due to Halloween and Thanksgiving. :)

• Purpose: Each problem set is meant to reinforce the material from lecture. Staying on track means completing an average of just over 2 exercises per lecture, though more exercises will be provided for extra practice. Doing these exercises is how most of your learning occurs: the questions are often challenging, and are designed to help you deepen your understanding. Problem sets also include old exam questions.
• Due dates: The official due date is Saturday night at 11pm, but you may hand in work at any time until 8am Sunday morning. After 8am, solutions will be posted and no additional work will be accepted. Upload whatever you have on Saturday night before you go to sleep, even if you plan on waking up early to complete it…people oversleep!

• Scoring: The scoring is set up to encourage you to do at least some work every week, and not be too stressed about getting 100% of things correct. Again, the main point of the problem sets is for you to learn the material.

  • I will give you many problems so that you can practice with them, but you do not need to complete all problems. Each problem on a problem set is worth 3 points. Think of the scoring as “check-plus (3), check (2), check-minus (1).”

  • Your grade on the problem set is the number of points you earn, not the percentage you get correct. You may earn a maximum of 12 points per problem set. If you earn more than 12 points, your score is capped at 12; this is to prevent people from trying to “bank” lots of points and then skipping the whole second half of the class. (Yes, this happened in the past. Sigh.)

  • Full credit is given for 100 total points. Since there are 10 problem sets, this means you need to earn an average of 10 points per problem set. It also means you can miss up to two problem sets and still receive nearly full credit. However, note that it’s better to not skip problem sets altogether – it’s much better to get 5 points than 0!

  • Getting more than 100 total points does not help your grade; there is no extra credit for additional work done. Obviously, the more practice you get, the better your exam grades will be!

• Honor Code: You may work with other students on the problem sets, but you must upload your own work. Furthermore, you may not consult any old solution sets which may exist from past quarters or use AI. (Doing so actively hurts your exam grades!) Uploading or downloading problem sets to web sites such as CourseHero is a violation of the Honor Code.

Exams (65% of your grade)

Based on feedback from prior quarters, the exam setup will be a little different than it was in the past. There will be one required midterm, two optional one-hour “checkpoint exams,” and of course the final.

While checkpoints are technically optional, taking them can only improve your grade! To be specific:

• The midterm covers weeks 1-3 and counts for 20% of your grade. If you are sick for the midterm, we will have a makeup test; you cannot simply skip the midterm. Hopefully no one is sick. :)
• The final exam covers weeks 4-10 and counts for 45% of your grade. Note, it will not cover weeks 1-3. (The previously cumulative nature of the final was a big pain point in course evals, because we don’t touch on the early stuff after week 3; by making the midterm mandatory, I can let the final just cover the game theory material from the last 2/3 of the class.)
• The checkpoints may be used to raise your final exam score! If you do better on one of the checkpoints than you do on the final, that checkpoint will count for 10% of your grade, and the final exam will count for 35% of your grade. If you do better on both of the checkpoints than you do on the final, each checkpoint will count for 10% of your grade, and the final exam will count for 25% of your grade. So, while they’re optional, you maximize your potential grade by taking both of them.

The Checkpoint exams will be held in the evenings on the dates noted above. We are offering two seatings, from 5:30-6:30 and from 7:00-8:00, to accommodate people with different extracurricular activities. If you have an unavoidable conflict with both of those times, please let me know via Ed Discussions. There are no makeup exams for Checkpoints or the Final Exam.

If you are an athlete traveling on Stanford business, you should arrange to have an official traveling with the team administer your test. Please fill out this form for each test you will have to miss.

• Honor Code: All exams will be in person, closed-book and closed-note. You will be able to use a simple (non-graphing, non-programmable) calculator.
• Scoring: Each exam will be curved based on its difficulty. Grade cutoffs will be published after we grade each exam and determine what scores demonstrate sufficient mastery of the material to earn an A, B, C, etc. Note that your exam performance is based on an absolute, not a relative, standard: it is possible for everyone in the class to get an A on a test (and also possible for everyone to get a C).

Policy on Missed and Late Work

Quizzes

Because the purpose of quizzes is to prepare you for lecture, and the due date is just before lecture, there are no extensions on quizzes. However, I write some pretty tricky quiz questions, mostly because I want to alert you to what you’re really going to have to pay attention to in lecture. Since I don’t expect you to get 100% on the quiz grades, I add 20 percentage points to your overall quiz grade. (The grade is capped at 100%, so that anything above an 80% earns a perfect grade.)

Lectures

There is no concept of an “excused absence;” please do not email me letting me know you will be missing lecture. Since I know that people travel, get sick, etc., I add 20 percentage points to your PollEv score; essentially this means you get to miss four classes without it affecting your grade. (Again, your PollEv grade is capped at 100%.)

If you are a student-athlete who will be missing more than four lectures traveling for your sport, or if you have an illness which causes you to miss more than four classes, please let me know and I will adjust your participation score appropriately. However, note that missing more than four classes will make it really hard to succeed in the class; I’d recommend taking this course in a quarter when you can be present for as many lectures as possible.

Homeworks

You may upload a problem set to Gradescope until 8am the morning after it is due. Beyond that, no extensions are given on any problem set, ever, for any reason. Fundamentally, I want you be working each week on that week’s material; extensions only lead to “homework debt” and falling farther behind. Remember that you don’t need to complete all problems each week; so just hand in whatever you have time to get to in any given week, and if one week you can’t do very many, be sure to do more the next. (This policy has been cleared with OAE; even if you have an OAE letter which would normally grant you extensions on homeworks, that’s not applicable to this course.)

Also, remember that you can submit partial work to Gradescope, and then re-upload more completed work; so it’s best to “save your work” by uploading a partially completed problem set early, so you don’t forget to upload it! I would honestly try to finish your homework by Friday afternoon, and treat Saturday as an “extension.” But do what’s best for you.

Exams

The midterm and final exam are required. The Economics Department Common Syllabus specifies that the ONLY exceptions for required exams are health emergencies and the death of a close family member.

If you cannot take the midterm exam due to illness or emergency, we will arrange for a makeup exam. This is because the final exam will not cover materials from weeks 1-3.

If you cannot take the Final exam due to illness or emergency, you may take an Incomplete in the class only if you meet the following criteria:

• You have a (curved) score of at least 80% on your PollEv (so a raw score of at least 60%), AND
• You have a (curved) score of at least 80% on your quiz grades (so a raw score of at least 60%), AND
• Your homework score is at least 80 points

Note that “I already bought a plane ticket home that leaves before the final, and it would be prohibitively expensive to change it” is NOT a valid reason to miss the final. For this reason, the syllabus posted on syllabus.stanford.edu has stated that the exam must be taken in person since it was posted weeks before the class began.

Prerequisites

We will be building on the tools and approaches from Econ 50, especially in the first few weeks of the class. Axess is programmed such that you will not be able to register in Econ 51 if you have not completed Econ 50. If you have taken a course outside of Stanford that is similar to Econ 50 (in particular, that covered consumer optimization and indifference curves using multivariable calculus), please contact econ-undergrad@stanford.edu for guidance on how to apply for an Axess registration code.

Course Technology

We will use Canvas as the main course hub; all other course resources, as well as information on office hours, will be linked from our Canvas page. Important announcements, lecture notes and readings will also be posted on Canvas.

We will use Gradescope to hand in all written work. Links for each assignment will be available in Canvas. You will be automatically enrolled in Gradescope; there is no need for a code. We will sync the roster before each of the first few assignments.

Please use Ed Discussions to ask any questions related to course content. This ensures that I can answer questions for the entire class, and don’t end up replying to a ton of identical emails. Please also answer student questions in Ed Discussions – that’s a great way to help your fellow students and learn the material better. I also consider responses in Ed Discussions when evaluating students who ask for letters of recommendation or who apply to become TAs.

Class Culture and Values

All members of the Econ 51 community fully belong in this class, and will be treated as such.

The relevance that economics has is not limited to any one group of individuals: as economists, we strive to understand the world as it is, and to use those insights to find solutions that improve everyone’s lives. Therefore, to be successful economists fundamentally requires seeking to understand and empathize with people from all backgrounds, perspectives, and situations. The diversity that you as students bring to this class, in all dimensions, is a resource we will continually draw on. To that end, I hope you will both share your perspective and listen respectfully to others’ perspectives, especially when they differ from your own – we learn very little by only hearing voices which are exactly like ours!

One fundamental pillar of respect is addressing people the way they would like to be addressed. I would encourage you to use the feature of Canvas that allows you to record your name and, if you wish, to share the pronouns by which you prefer to be referred. I and the other members of the teaching team will do our best to pronounce your name correctly, and refer to you with your preferred pronouns; and that feature is a great way to communicate those preferences to us.

If you ever feel that I or any other member of the teaching team is disrespecting you or anyone else in the class, please bring this to my attention immediately.

Stanford University Honor Code and the Fundamental Standard

The Honor Code and Fundamental Standard are integral parts of this course. In the context of the course, this means two things:

Handing in other’s work as your own is a violation of the Honor Code. Therefore, asking a human friend to do your homework for you is a violation of the Honor Code. So is asking a robot friend (i.e., AI). More importantly, the whole purpose of the homework is to prepare you for the exams; this is why I call them homework “exercises.” Having someone else do your exercises for you is a little like having someone else do push-ups for you; technically, the push-ups get done, but you are no stronger for it. The results will come through on an exam.

Homework solution sets are provided to help you understand your mistakes. Old solution sets should not be used in helping you do your homework. Uploading solution sets to third-party web sites such as CourseHero is a violation of the Honor Code.

Copying work on exams is a serious offense. To reduce the temptation to do so, we have two versions of each exam which are different in subtle ways. Submitting answers to an exam which is not your own is a serious Honor Code violation and will result in an immediate referral to OCS.

Students with Documented Disabilities or Extenuating Circumstances

Students who may need an academic accommodation based on the impact of a disability must initiate the request with the Office of Accessible Education (OAE). Professional staff will evaluate the request with required documentation, recommend reasonable accommodations, and prepare an Accommodation Letter for faculty dated in the current quarter in which the request is being made. Please contact the OAE (phone: 723-1066, online at http://oae.stanford.edu) as soon as possible since timely notice is needed to coordinate accommodations.

Generally speaking, OAE accommodations in the context of this course mean extended time on exams, as extensions on problem sets are never allowed beyond the point when solutions have been posted. Once you have an OAE letter, we will provide you with a link to upload it.

In order to accommodate all students effectively, there is a strict deadline of two weeks before any exam to submit your OAE letter.

In addition, we know that anyone might face unforeseen challenges at any time, causing them to miss work or class time. If this happens to you, please email Professor Makler; we will be flexible and work with you on a plan to get the most out of the class, regardless of whether you have an OAE letter or not.

Economics Department Common Syllabus

Beyond the specifics outlined above, all courses taught in the Stanford Department of Economics are governed by a common set of course management rules. The Economics Common Syllabus explaining these rules is on the Economics Department website at this link. The Department does not allow me to grant exceptions to these rules.