General Remarks on Teaching Materials

I retired from teaching in April 2022, so this section of the site is no longer being updated. These archives may be useful for students, instructors, or researchers.

Information is provided for the five courses I taught during the 2020s and 2010s. All have long histories going back to the 2000s or 1990s. Econ 354, 426, and 452 were undergraduate courses. Econ 802 and 911 were graduate courses.

I supply outlines, class schedules, and other documents distributed to the students during the last semester in which each course was taught (see dates indicated in parentheses). For most courses, this includes detailed lecture notes that were used in the final semester.

Exam questions are available for all the semesters in which a course was offered. The exams for 354, 426, 452, and 911 typically had essay-style questions and I do not provide answers for these courses. The exams for 802 had a problem-solving format and answer keys are supplied.

The outlines state the prerequisites necessary for each course. Econ 354 only assumes a broad awareness of introductory microeconomics and is essentially self-contained. Econ 426 and 452 assume students have taken two courses in intermediate microeconomic theory, although people without this background will probably understand much of what is going on. Econ 802 and 911 assume strong preparation for graduate training in microeconomic theory, which would include advanced undergraduate micro theory and a course in undergraduate mathematical economics.

Before jumping into the substance of a course, I recommend reading the introductory lecture notes to get a sense of how the course was organized.

Clicking on one of the links listed below will take you directly to the resources for that course. You can also scroll down through all five courses if you prefer.

  • Econ 354: Comparative Economic Institutions
  • Econ 426W: Seminar in Industrial Organization: Governance and Institutions
  • Econ 452W: Seminar in Economic Prehistory
  • Econ 802: Microeconomic Theory I
  • Econ 911: Selected Topics in Economic Prehistory


    • Econ 354: Comparative Economic Institutions (Spring 2022)

    This course was based on four books, which should be read in the order described by the class schedule. Most of the books provide case studies of small-scale societies or communities, and they make little use of formal economic modeling.

    My lecture notes spend some time on the case studies, but not at the same level of detail as in the books. The primary purpose of the lectures is to construct economic models that might be useful in understanding the societies described by the authors of the books. These models are graphical or algebraic and often build on theoretical ideas developed by the authors. When authors assume that readers are already familiar with certain technical concepts, I give the necessary background information in my lectures.

    For each book, the lecture notes are divided into sections corresponding to chapters or groups of chapters. I recommend first reading a book chapter or a group of chapters and then reading the discussion of those chapters from my lecture notes, before moving on to the next group of book chapters followed by my discussion of those chapters, and so forth. This strategy of alternating between the book and my comments on it will simulate the student experience in a classroom.

    There was a separate exam on each individual book. I did not give comprehensive final exams in this course. After finishing a book, you can look at the corresponding exams to see which ideas I thought were most important. Within each file, scroll down to view exams from earlier years.

    During 1998-2003, the course was designated as Econ 383 or 387. The content stayed the same throughout, except that I replaced a previous book with the one by Putterman starting in 2013.

    Course Outline

    Class Schedule

    Lecture notes

    Exams on individual books

    Farewell to Econ 354

    Econ 426W: Seminar in Industrial Organization: Governance and Institutions (Fall 2021)

    The main goal of this course was to introduce students to the concept of labor-managed firms (LMFs) and to explore why such firms are relatively rare compared to capital-managed firms (KMFs). Along the way, we considered philosophical issues, looked at case studies of LMFs, reviewed the economic concept of the firm, evaluated hypotheses about why LMFs tend to be rare, and discussed policies to encourage employee buyouts of conventional firms.

    My book "Governing the Firm: Workers' Control in Theory and Practice" (Cambridge University Press, 2003) was used as the textbook. The course had a seminar format, and it relied heavily on weekly student-led discussions of individual book chapters. The lecture notes mainly evolved as commentaries on these student discussions, but they also include introductory material, my own overviews of the last two chapters, and a few topics not covered in the book. I recommend that you first read a chapter and then read the lecture notes for that chapter before moving on.

    If I had taught such a course at the graduate level, the text would have been my subsequent book "The Labor-Managed Firm: Theoretical Foundations" (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

    During 2002-2006, the course was not numbered as Econ 426 (it had a variety of 'selected topics' numbers). In 2002-2004 there were both midterms and final exams, where the midterms focused on chapters 1-6 and the finals focused on chapters 7-12. Starting in 2005, there were only finals, and these covered the entire book. The course content remained the same in all years, apart from a few variations in my lectures on supplemental topics.

    Course Outline

    Class Participation

    Written Assignments

    Bibliography

    Lecture notes

    Past Exams

    Farewell to Econ 426

    Econ 452W: Seminar in Economic Prehistory (Spring 2022)

    I define prehistoric societies to be those that do not leave written records. The course studies the economies of such societies, drawing upon evidence from archaeology and anthropology. Three key subjects are examined: life in foraging societies, the reasons for the transition to agriculture, and the nature of the institutions that emerged in early agricultural societies.

    Ideally, the textbook for this course would have been my book co-authored with Clyde Reed titled "Economic Prehistory: Six Transitions That Shaped the World" (Cambridge University Press, 2022). But because this book had not yet been published, the reading list consisted of chapters from other books plus various journal articles, including several by Dow and Reed.

    Due to some randomness associated with the covid-19 pandemic, I do not have a complete set of lecture notes for this course. There are notes from the first few weeks of the 2022 course and the last few weeks of the 2020 course. I did not compile polished notes for the middle of the course because online teaching was unnecessary for these topics in 2020 and 2022. For missing topics, I suggest looking at the relevant chapters of the book on economic prehistory mentioned above.

    In 2007 there was no midterm and a comprehensive final exam. In all subsequent years I gave both a midterm and a final, where the final was not cumulative (it only covered the topics after the midterm). Variations in the calendar sometimes led to minor changes in the distribution of topics between the two exams.

    I added and subtracted individual readings over the years, so occasionally the earlier exams have questions about readings that are omitted from the 2022 class schedule. However, the content of the course did not change in any major way.

    Course Outline

    Class schedule

    Written Assignments

    Bibliography

    Lecture notes

    Past Exams

    Farewell to Econ 452

    Econ 802: Microeconomic Theory I (Fall 2021)

    This course was required for MA students in economics at SFU. Subjects included production, consumption, partial equilibrium, and general equilibrium with perfectly competitive markets. I did not cover expected utility, game theory, the economics of information, or mechanism design.

    If you are trying to learn micro theory using the materials of this course, I suggest the following procedure. For a given chapter from Varian's textbook as listed in the class schedule, first check my lecture notes to see whether I covered the entire chapter. Usually I did, but sometimes it will be clear from my notes that I advised students to skip certain sections. Then read the sections of the chapter that are relevant. After this, carefully read my lecture notes for that chapter, and then re-read the book chapter itself. It might be necessary to go back and forth between the book and my notes several times before everything is clear. Then move on to the next chapter.

    Sometimes my lectures cover topics that are not in Varian and sometimes the lectures skip topics that are in Varian. If in doubt about what is important, you should follow the lectures to preserve the continuity of the subject matter.

    Each year I taught the course, I gave a first midterm exam, a second midterm exam, and a final exam. The first midterm always covered chapters 1-4 and sometimes also part or all of chapter 5, depending on the calendar. If some parts of chapter 5 were not covered on the first midterm, those parts appeared on the second midterm, along with questions about chapters 7-9.

    The final exam covered the entire course. It gave more than proportional attention (usually two out of five questions) to chapters 13, 17, and 18 since these chapters were not on the midterms. In some years I had time for partial coverage of chapter 18, but in other years it was omitted.

    Under the heading 'practice questions', I list the exam questions related to each specific textbook chapter. After you have read a chapter and my lecture notes for that chapter (or perhaps a pair of chapters), I strongly recommend finding the relevant exam questions for those chapters, spending a significant amount of time writing out answers, and checking your answers against mine. Try to identify the reasons for any discrepancies between the two. Then move to the next chapter or the next series of chapters and do the same thing. Solving the practice questions is crucial to the learning process. They are just as important as the textbook and the lecture notes.

    Note: do not merely read the exam questions and then immediately read my answers. This will result in very little learning. Instead, write out your own answers and check them against mine. That way you can detect the flaws in your reasoning and correct them.

    The lists of practice questions for early chapters in the course were compiled using the midterms. The final exams also included a range of questions relevant to the early chapters, but these do not appear on the corresponding practice lists. To determine whether you have mastered the material for the entire course, choose one of the final exams, set aside three uninterrupted hours in which to write out your answers, and then check your answers against mine to see how you did. If you got at least 2/3 of what I was looking for, that would have been an A- or A. Congratulations!

    Course Outline

    Schedule

    Lecture notes

    Exams and answers

    Practice questions

    Farewell to Econ 802

    Econ 911: Selected Topics in Economic Prehistory (Spring 2017)

    This is a graduate-level version of my Econ 452 course. It was taught in 2008, 2010, 2013, and 2017. The materials here are from 2017 except that I have included exams from previous years.

    The content of the course evolved over time, so the older exams sometimes ask questions about readings or topics that do not appear in the class schedule for 2017.

    If I were teaching this course today, I would use my book co-authored with Clyde Reed titled "Economic Prehistory: Six Transitions That Shaped the World" (Cambridge University Press, 2022). There would be more emphasis on the formal models in the book than in the Econ 452 course. I would also use a range of journal articles written by economists and archaeologists.

    I do not have polished lecture notes for this course, but the prehistory book is a good substitute.

    The midterm exams covered the first half of the course. In principle the final exams covered the entire course. However, I tried to avoid excessive overlap with the questions from the midterms, so the final exams frequently put more emphasis on the second half of the course.

    Course Outline

    Class schedule

    Term Paper

    Bibliography

    Past Exams