ECON101: Principles of Microeconomics

4.1: The Rational Consumer

• OpenStax College: "Principles of Microeconomics, Chapter 6: Introduction to Consumer Choices"

  Read Chapter 6 for information on consumer choice, including utility, consumer equilibrium, consumer equilibrium demand, consumer surplus, budget constraint, and consumer equilibrium and indifference curves.
  

• Principles of Microeconomics: "Chapter 7 - Introduction, Section 1 and Section 2"

  Read the Chapter 7 Introduction and Sections 7.1 and 7.2. Attempt the "Try It" problems at the end of each section. Take a moment to read through the stated learning outcomes for this chapter of the text, which you can find at the beginning of each section. These outcomes should be your goals as you read through the chapter.

• TED Talks: "Sheena Iyengar on the Art of Choosing" Page

  This is an optional lecture and not a requirement of the course. Please listen to this guest lecture in which the speaker talks about her ground-breaking research on how people make choices and explains attitudes towards their decisions.
  

• Khan Academy: "Marginal Utility" Page

  Watch this video about marginal utility.
  

• Khan Academy: "Budget Line" Page

  Watch this video about the budget line.
  

• Khan Academy: "Deriving Demand Curve from Tweaking Marginal Utility per Dollar" Page

  Watch this video about deriving the demand curve from tweaking marginal utility per dollar.
  

• Wolfram Demonstrations Project: "Constrained Optimization: Cobb-Douglas Utility and Interior Solutions Using a Lagrangian"