Managerial Economics COMM 172 (003-004)

Course Syllabus Winter, 2025

Teaching Team
Course Instructor Head Teaching Assistant
Felix Fosu E-mail:
Office: Goodes Hall, room 431
E-mail: [email protected]

Course Information
Course Time/Location
Section 003: Tue 11:30-1:00 Fri 1:00-2:30 Room 141
Section 004: Tue. 8:30-10:00 Fri 10:00-11:30 Room 153

Office Hours: Tuesdays 10:00-11:30

Fridays 11:30-1:00
Or by appointment

Course Description
This course covers the economic foundations of managerial decision-making. Topics include demand estimation and
forecasting, production and costs, pricing strategies for firms with market power, industry structure, competition policy,
patents and innovation, decision making under uncertainty, adverse selection, moral hazard, and incentive contracts. The
course uses a variety of mathematical techniques, particularly algebra and calculus.
Learning Objectives
The course is designed to help develop deeper understanding of how markets function; governments make decisions;
firms make price, output, hiring, business expansion and many other decisions; and individuals make their decisions. The
course aims to teach rigorous reasoning, careful thought process, critical reading, strong analytical skills in mathematics
and statistics, and strategical thinking and decision making to optimize the outcome. Students should learn to apply
important economic concepts to decision-making in managerial contexts.
Course Materials
All course material is available on the course website at smithlearning.ca
Recommended Readings
Microeconomics, 9th edition, by Robert S. Pindyck and Daniel L. Rubinfeld

• You can also use the 6th, 7th, or 8th edition as they all cover essentially the same material.
• You do not need the study guide or the access code to “MyEconLab”

Assessments
Assessment Weights
Category Weight
2 Quizzes 10% (5% each)
2 Assignments(Group) 10% (5% each)
Mid-Term Exam 30%
Final Exam 50%
Total 100%

Assessment Descriptions
Note that the weightings of all grades are fixed and cannot be `renegotiated’. Moreover, to be fair to all students, you
cannot “earn extra credits” if you are not satisfied with your exam/assignment grades.

The primary benefit of the assignments is the practice. The course material is very complex and cannot be learned
simply by reading the relevant text or watching the posted recordings. Assignments are also part of your exam
preparation, as the mid-term and final exams will ask similar questions.
Assignments are to be done in groups. All students will be randomly assigned to groups of 3-4 students. Group
membership may be confirmed online through Communication tab, Groups. Once formed, group membership may be
changed only for equity or safety reasons. Group re-assignment is random.
Students must perform group work in a manner that is respectful, safe, and that allows all members to feel that they
belong. As in many a professional environment, when conflicts and disputes arise between group members, they must
be resolved internally, and as adults. Learning to work with people you do not know or do not always agree with is a
valuable skill that will serve you well, both in university and beyond. But if for equity and safety reasons, you want to
drop out of your assigned group and work on your own, please submit your request to me by email.

Exams

The mid-term and final exams will be in person, closed-book, and closed-notes exams. The mid-term exam will test the
material covered in Weeks 1-4 and the Midterm Review session (Oligopoly I is not on the mid-term exam) and will last for
two (2) hours. The final exam will test all material covered in the course and will last for three (3) hours. Further
instructions will be communicated in class and on the course website.
Course Schedule
Week Number & Topics Assessments Recommended
Dates readings from
Microeconomics, 9th
ed., by R.S. Pindyck
and D.L. Rubinfeld

1 Jan. 7 Introduction; Review of Key Concepts from

Jan. 10 COMM 171 Ch. 2.1-2.5, p.713–719
Regression Analysis. Revenue and Cost
Management

2 Jan. 14 Demand Estimation and Forecasting Ch. 4.6

Jan. 17

3 Jan. 21 The Vertical Boundaries of the Firm Assignment 1 due

Jan. 24 Profit Maximization. Perfect Competition Jan 26, 8:00pm EST Ch. 8.1–8.7

4 Jan. 28 Monopoly I Ch. 10.1–10.4

Jan. 31 Monopoly II. Monopolistic Competition Ch. 11.6

5 Feb. 4 Oligopoly I Quiz 1 due Feb. 9, Ch. 12.1–12.2

Feb. 7 Midterm review 8:00pm EST

6 Midterm assessment period (no classes) Midterm Exam (date:

TBA)

7 Reading week (no classes)

8 Feb. 25 Oligopoly II Ch. 12.3–12.5

Feb 28 Pricing Strategies for Firms with Market Ch. 11.1–11.2
Power I

9 Mar. 4 Pricing Strategies for Firms with Market Ch. 11.4–11.5

Power II
Mar. 7 Strategic Interaction among Firms I Ch. 13.1–13.3

10 Mar. 11 Strategic Interaction among Firms II Ch. 13.4–13.7

Mar. 14 Intellectual Property Protection Ch. 10.4

11 Mar. 18 Competition Policy Assignment 2 due Ch. 10.7

Mar. 21 Decision Making under Uncertainty Mar. 23, 8:00pm EST Ch. 5.1–5.3

12 Mar. 25 Markets with Asymmetric Information Ch. 17.1–17.4, 17.6

Mar. 28

13 Apr. 1-4 Course Review Quiz 2 due April 5,

8:00pm EST
COURSE POLICY FOR COMM 172
Managerial Economics (COMM 172) is a large multi-section course. To be fair to every student, it is important to be
consistent about rules regarding assignments, exams, and grading. Please familiarize yourself with the policies outlined
below. All students are deemed to know the course policies, and more important, are expected to comply with the
rules.

Class attendance
Attendance is not mandatory, but is strongly encouraged. The material is challenging, the course gets progressively more
difficult, and it is very easy to fall behind.

If you miss a class due to extenuating circumstances (see the section ‘For Extenuating Circumstances’ in the course
syllabus) and you need help with the course material, please let me know as soon as possible and I will help you
individually. Otherwise, it is your responsibility to learn the material from classes you missed.

Grading
All assessments in this course will receive numerical percentage marks. The final grade you receive for the course will be
derived by converting your numerical course average to a letter grade according to the established Senate-Approved
Grading Scheme.

Assignments
Each assignment must be submitted by the specified deadline. Late submissions and unaccepted submissions are subject
to the following penalty: 5% will be deducted after the first five minutes late, and 5% more will be deducted for each
additional 60 minutes thereafter. This penalty applies to the grade of all group members, regardless of who is responsible
for the late or unacceptable submission.

All assignments are your assignments, not your professor’s or your teaching assistant (TA). It is acceptable to ask for
clarification (by email or better, during office hours), but to be fair to every student, neither I nor your TA will answer your
assignment questions for you, nor check your solutions before the official submission of your assignments.

In the event of extenuating circumstances (see the section ‘For Extenuating Circumstances’ below), you may request (by
submitting a form to the Commerce office) an extension to a deliverable due date without penalty. Note that
unacceptable reasons include malfunctioning computer, travel plans to go home for holidays, generally behind on
schoolwork, etc. In the absence of substantiating documentation, the normal late penalty will apply as described above.

You may turn in handwritten assignments. In this case, please make sure that your handwriting is legible; be aware that
you may lose marks if the marker cannot decipher your handwriting. If you know that your handwriting is hard to read,
please use a word processor.

Exams
In the event of extenuating circumstances (see the section ‘For Extenuating Circumstances’ below), you are eligible to
write the make-up exam. The Commerce Office will schedule the make-up exam. All permitted students must write at the
new scheduled time. There are no exceptions to this policy. Note that the make-up exam will ask different questions (i.e.,
you will not get the same exam).

In case of a conflict with another official exam at Queen’s University, you need to contact the Commerce Office as soon
as possible to make arrangements for an early or late exam. The early or late exam must then take place on the same day
as the official COMM 172 exam, and their respective time slots must overlap.
Except in case of a conflict with another official exam at Queen’s University or extenuating circumstances, there will be
no early or delayed exam. You are required to take an exam at the official date during the official exam period. Do not
schedule job interviews, meetings or travel plans during the University’s official exam periods.

Re-grading
The grading is done by several markers who are individually instructed to ensure fairness and consistency. Please contact
me in case of computational errors, so that she can correct them immediately. If you disagree with the marking, you can
submit your assignments/exams to me for re-grading. Requests for re-grading assignments or the exam must be submitted
within 14 days after the respective grades have been posted on the course website (any requests submitted after these
14 days will be ignored). To request a re-grading of your assignment/exam, you will need to submit a written detailed
statement explaining what answers you believe were marked improperly, and why. Based on your written statement, I
will decide whether your assignment/exam is eligible for re-grading. If you rely on the assignment and grading of a
different group or someone else’s exam, you will additionally need to submit those, which are then also subject to re-
grading. Once I deem your request justified, I (and not the original marker) will re-grade your entire assignment/exam.
In case of a discrepancy between my grading and the original grading of the marker, the final grade for your
assignment/exam will be the one based on my grading. Please note that this re-grading may result in either a higher or
lower grade.

Suggested Time Commitment

This course represents a study period of one term spanning 12 consecutive weeks. Learners can expect to invest on
average seven to nine hours per week in this course. Learners who adhere to a predetermined study schedule are more
likely to successfully complete the course on time.

Course Communication
Netiquette
In this course, you will be expected to communicate with your peers and the teaching team through electronic
communication. You are expected to use the utmost respect in your dealings with your colleagues or when participating
in activities, discussions, and online communication.

Following is a list of netiquette guidelines. Please read them carefully and use them to guide your online communication
in this course and beyond.

• Make a personal commitment to learn about, understand, and support your peers.
• Assume the best of others and expect the best of them.
• Acknowledge the impact of oppression on the lives of other people and make sure your writing is respectful and
inclusive.
• Recognize and value the experiences, abilities, and knowledge each person brings.
• Pay close attention to what your peers write before you respond. Think through and re-read your writings before
you post or send them to others.
• It’s alright to disagree with ideas, but do not make personal attacks.
• Be open to being challenged or confronted on your ideas and challenge others with the intent of facilitating
growth. Do not demean or embarrass others.
• Encourage others to develop and share their ideas.

Privacy
All students are expected to respect the privacy of others. Capturing of still and moving images and audio of other
individuals without their express consent is a violation of privacy. Similarly, recordings and images taken of teaching
materials and/or the instructor without permission is a violation of privacy and fails to recognize that instructors have
intellectual property rights to their own teaching materials. The teaching and learning environment should be a safe space
in which all participants are expected to uphold the values of respect, dignity and trust. To learn more, please refer to the
following:
• Taking and Using Images with Consent | Records Management and Privacy Office (queensu.ca)
• Privacy and Remote Teaching and Learning | Records Management and Privacy Office (queensu.ca)

Course Announcements
I will routinely post course news in the Announcements and Calendar section on the main course homepage. Please sign
up to be automatically notified by email when the instructor posts in the Announcements section. Instructions on how to
modify your notifications are found in the Start Here section at smithlearning.ca.

Confidential Matters
If you have a confidential matter that you would like to discuss with me, please email me ([email protected]). Expect
email replies within 48 hours or less. Email communication with your professor is not casual correspondence, but instead
should adhere to business email etiquette.

Policies
Copyright
Unless otherwise stated, the material on the course website is copyright protected and is for the sole use of students
registered in this course. The material on the website may be downloaded for a registered student’s personal use but shall
not be distributed or disseminated to anyone other than students registered in this course. Failure to abide by these
conditions is a breach of copyright, and may also constitute a breach of academic integrity under the University Senate’s
Academic Integrity Policy Statement.

Academic Integrity
Students are responsible for familiarizing themselves with, and adhering to, the regulations concerning academic integrity.
Information on policies concerning academic integrity is available in the Queen’s University Code of Conduct, in the Senate
Academic Integrity Policy Statement, on the Smith School of Business website. Departures from academic integrity include,
but are not limited to, plagiarism, use of unauthorized materials, facilitation, forgery, and falsification. Actions which
contravene the academic integrity regulations carry sanctions that can range from a warning, to loss of grades on an
assignment, to failure of a course, to requirement to withdraw from the university.

To assist you in identifying the boundary between acceptable collaboration and a departure from academic integrity in
this specific course, I provide the following guidelines for individual and group work:

Individual Work: Course deliverables identified as individual in nature must be the result of your individual effort. Outside
sources must be properly cited and referenced in assignments; be careful to cite all sources, not only of direct quotations
but also of ideas. Ideas, information and quotations taken from the internet must also be properly cited and
referenced. Help for citing sources is available through the Queen’s University library: http://library.queensu.ca/help/cite-
sources.

Group Work: In a group assignment, the group members will work together to develop an original, consultative response
to the assigned topic. Group members must not look at, access or discuss any aspect of any other group’s solution
(including a group from a previous year), nor allow anyone outside of the group to look at any aspect of the group’s
solution. Likewise, you are prohibited from utilizing the internet or any other means to access others’ solutions to, or
discussions of, the assigned material. The names of each group member must appear on the submitted assignment, and
no one other than the people whose names appear on the assignment may have contributed in any way to the submitted
solution. In short, the group assignments must be the work of your group, and your group only. All group members are
responsible for ensuring the academic integrity of the work that the group submits.

Accessibility Compliance Information

Please see D2L Accessibility Standards and Zoom Accessibility

Academic and Student Support

Queen’s has a robust set of supports available to you including the Library, Student Academic Success Services (Learning
Strategies and Writing Centre), and Career Services. Learners are encouraged to visit the Smith Student Support page for
information about various other policies such as academic advisors, registration, student exchanges, awards and
scholarships, etc.

For Accommodations
Students are responsible for submitting their Letter of Accommodation to the Commerce Office. To learn more about the
Accommodations process or to submit your Letter of Accommodation, visit the Academic Accommodations page.

For Extenuating Circumstances

If you are experiencing extenuating circumstances that are beyond your control (e.g., a sudden physical or mental illness,
a serious injury or required treatment for yourself or a significant other, bereavement, or a traumatic event) and
interfering with academic deliverables, you must submit a Request for Academic Consideration for Extenuating
Circumstances to the Commerce Office to receive academic consideration for any missed or affected
deliverables. Personal or family events (i.e., wedding, vacation, interview, etc.), transportation difficulties, chronic
technical issues, and competing commitments are not considered extenuating circumstances. Please refer to
the Commerce Portal for more information and to submit a request for academic consideration. Please note, instructors
are not to receive requests or supporting documentation (i.e., medical forms, doctor’s notes, obituaries, etc.).

If your extenuating circumstance is related to your academic accommodations with QSAS, do not complete a request for
academic consideration. Instead, notify your instructor, QSAS Advisor, and [email protected].

Tech Support
No specialized computer-related technical skills are required for this course. If you require technical assistance, please
contact Tech Support.

Personal Counselling
If at any time you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, anxious, sad, lonely, or distressed, supportive personal counselling
is available to you through the Smith Commerce program.