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Back to Firm Level Economics: Consumer and Producer Behavior

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Firm Level Economics: Consumer and Producer Behavior by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

4.8
stars
2,394 ratings

About the Course

All goods and services are subject to scarcity at some level, which requires that society develop some allocation mechanism to determine who gets what. Over recorded history, these allocation rules were usually command based, meaning that the king or the emperor would decide. In contemporary times, most countries have turned to market-based allocation systems. In markets, prices act as rationing devices, encouraging or discouraging production and encouraging or discouraging consumption to find an equilibrium allocation of resources. To understand this process, businesses construct demand curves to capture consumer behavior and consider supply curves to capture producer behavior. The resulting equilibrium price “rations” the scarce commodity. You will be able to: • Describe consumer behavior as captured by the demand curve and producer behavior as captured by the supply curve • Define equilibrium and explain the impact of taxes and price controls on market equilibrium • Explain elasticity of demand • Describe cost theory and how firms optimize given the constraints of their own costs and an exogenously given price This course is part of Gies College of Business’ suite of online programs, including the iMBA and iMSM. Learn more about admission into these programs and explore how your Coursera work can be leveraged if accepted into a degree program at https://degrees.giesbusiness.illinois.edu/idegrees/....

Top reviews

KS

Sep 11, 2019

This was awesome. I did not know Firm Level Economics when I joined this course. The explanations were simple and Prof DeBrock explained really difficult concepts in a very easy to understand manner.

FP

May 12, 2017

In the beginning I thought this was going to be a very basic course, but the way the professor explained the topics really make it interesting a practical, going beyond the classical economic theory.

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1 - 25 of 556 Reviews for Firm Level Economics: Consumer and Producer Behavior

By J S

Feb 17, 2020

Larry is one of my all time favorite professors. No one teaches price theory like him. He makes the material entertaining and creates an enjoyable learning experience. I wish he taught more courses.

By Sheikh S M

Apr 27, 2020

Had lot of fun learning in this course. Although I had a basic concept of economics but with the help of this course I now have a clear and better understanding on Consumer and producer behavior.

By Fernando P

May 12, 2017

In the beginning I thought this was going to be a very basic course, but the way the professor explained the topics really make it interesting a practical, going beyond the classical economic theory.

By Shahid N

Feb 4, 2019

Absolutely made me understand firm level economics concepts. Good practice and foundation building.

Professor is great and engages will with real life examples and connections.

By Kartikeyan S

Sep 12, 2019

This was awesome. I did not know Firm Level Economics when I joined this course. The explanations were simple and Prof DeBrock explained really difficult concepts in a very easy to understand manner.

By Laleen D

Mar 6, 2018

I took Micro Econ over 20 years ago. It was hard and boring. I barely passed the class. I just took Larry DeBrock's class and fell in love with the area. I had no idea that micro economics could be so interesting! It also helps that Larry DeBrock is an award winning lecturer at University of Illinois and past Dean of the ?business School. He takes the topic and breaks it down into easy-to-understand basics. I really enjoyed this class.

By Michael T

Feb 11, 2018

Theoretical content is this course is excellent, but additional mandatory reading is necessary to understand all the math calculations and math theory in this course. If you don't have a good background in Calculus or Business Math, you will be at a disadvantages. Also, the articles, references, and supplemental textbooks are mostly out-dates (2 years old or more).

By Dennison L

Feb 9, 2020

Professor DeBrock teaches a fine course. However, the assignments and graded content are tested at a much higher/more in-depth level then what is taught. Most of the questions are theoretical movements of demand, supply, costs, taxes, and etc that are not well covered in the lectures and not at all covered in the readings. The quizzes do not give you the correct answer either nor any explanation. I understand this is to prevent cheating, but it is unhelpful to basically brute force the quizzes to get it right - and still not understand why you are right/wrong.

By Nguyen T T

Mar 8, 2021

The course is great, it helps me to better understand Consumer and Manufacturer behavior, this is a new knowledge for me because I am not from economics major, this course is also an experience. New experience with me on how to learn online. Larry's lectures are clear, concise and easy to understand. In the first few videos I did not follow his teachings, but by the fourth video I was able to catch up with his lecture. Thank you very much for the lessons and drawings that are easy to understand. Wishing you always happy and healthy

By Ananth P B

Nov 9, 2020

Great introduction to Economics. Many people may feel that this is a dry subject, but it is not. The models that I worked on with Professor Larry are world class and if I were to plug in any practical numbers into those models, it would give me an insight into how a firm goes through profits and losses at a theoretical level.

By itself, I cannot foresee how useful it is, but being an MBA student, I can see immense help and great skills being gained.

By Malki B

Feb 10, 2020

As the first class I've taken since 1995, I will say that this is extremely challenging and invigorating. I really appreciate being given the tools of office hours and Khan academy to support my learning. I look forward to further training my mind and managing my time through work and life, to stay focused on the tasks set forth in the class. I believe in myself and even if I have to watch the videos 10 times, I will succeed.

Best M Brown

By Oleg K

Sep 24, 2020

Thank you very much for the course! Just an amazing dive into the world of Finance. The material is very interesting, and the tasks are very interesting and really make you think. Many thanks to Larry DeBrock, thanks to You I am Beginning to understand the world of Economics. The presentation of the material is fantastic. Thank you very much and see you in the next courses :)

By Abdullah f

Jan 4, 2022

One of the best courses I have taken on Coursera and one of the best instructors. Dr. DeBrock presented concepts in microeconomics, a subject which I had absolutely no knowledge about, in such a simple way with examples and intuitive explanations (leaving out the calculus portion :-)) and so much liveliness, that there was no ambiguity left at the end of the course. Thanks...

By Omkar G

May 12, 2020

This course is really useful for the candidates who are aspiring to learn the economics at the firm and consumer level. I did not have any prior knowledge of economics, but was still able to learn and apply it in real life scenarios. This course is very concise and easy to grasp as the examples given are very easy to connect and understand.

By Joe F

Feb 6, 2019

Professor Larry is awesome! He makes Economics interesting and understandable. I was a little hesitant about this class since I have taken this subject as part of my undergrad ( a few years back) but Prof Larry does a great job in using real world scenarios as part of his learning as opposed to just theory. Well done!

By M. L J

Mar 6, 2016

I thoroughly enjoyed Professor DeBrock's course. He did a fantastic job of illustrating important concepts without muddying the water with unnecessary jargon. I'm looking forward to continuing in the specialization with DeBrock at the helm. Thanks again!

By P. D K

Feb 11, 2017

Learned a lot about the fundamentals of supply and demand, and other related topics. Lectures were informative and enjoyable. Assignments tested fundamental knowledge. Recommend to anyone interested in the basics of economics.

By KARTIKEYA K

Jan 21, 2022

Professor Larry DeBrock has a very hands on approach to the concepts of economics. He integrates theoretical content with relevant practical examples , helping to understand the framework easily.

By HERNAN M

Jan 31, 2019

Awesome. Learning.

By heather m

Aug 10, 2017

The material in the course is good. The professor is great, and passionate about his profession. The peer review and quizzes covered information that was not presented in the course. Also, the peer review answers are not presented until after the the "week" is over. This means that as a "peer" I have no idea what the correct answer is and I am forced to grade assignments based on my opinion not the correct answer. This causes a lot of confusion. I had someone give me "0" points for an answer that was exactly the same as the answer key because the other student didn't understand what the questions was asking for. My rating of this class would improve significantly if the peer review solution was provided before students were required to review others. Since we are able to complete the solution as many times as necessary, this step is a waste of everyone's time.

By Gregory S

May 31, 2021

Decent information, but a lot of the class is made of chopped-up portions of other lectures, and several of the quizzes have answers which are simply not correct, or which do not have correct answers available. Additionally, every student gets the same question on the peer-reviewed final wrong (Q1, "Is this in equilibrium?"), which indicates that the lectures do not adequately teach what the students are intended to learn.

By Jamil I

May 14, 2020

Exams questions wasnt same What Larry talked about. Larry talked others things and questions were about other things

By James B

Feb 17, 2020

Below average economics course. The instructor is all over the place and sometimes appears to be making things up as he goes along. He rambles a lot sometimes misses the point.

By John P C

Nov 19, 2020

I find the Instructor uses a lot of narratives to explain the economic points. It is somewhat long but I find it very important to give actual real word instead of text book examples. So bear with that.

I find the topic a bit challenging to absorb due to lots of graphing and underlying concepts behind each movement of the curves. I find that a good background in Calculus and Algebra is very helpful and gives you an edge to understand it quickly but not necessary. But the most important thing is to understand the intuition behind the movements of the graph, consumers and producers.

Each behavior is very important particularly for a Business Analyst.

By Monica B

Apr 28, 2020

Larry is an extremely extremely good and capable teacher! He sure knows what he's talking about and teaches the concepts in a storytelling way which enabled me to retain them very well. Moreover, the quizzes make you think beyond what was said verbatim in the lectures. It really tests whether you have really understood not just the concepts standalone, but their connections. All in all a very good course with a very good teacher!