assignment

Microeconomics essay assignment

Students, you must obtain specific approval for your topic from the instructor before beginning! If you turn in a project without prior approval it will be a fail.

Maximum pages, including graphs: 15.

You must footnote sources and you must not copy and paste information from the internet. If you use internet sources, either put those sources in quotations or put those sources INTO YOUR OWN WORDS. Plagiarized sources will result in failure.

1. Compare prices of same product/service in at least ten different places. It can be in Prague, or in and out of Prague, or out of Prague (including via internet). It can be a common product or a luxury product, a common service or a luxury service. Describe the product or service.

2. Describe in tabular form where you found the product and the price (date, place, shop, address phone).

3. Here describe the basic findings: prices are the same or different.

4. Here use economic analysis (lectures/textbook/internet) as to why answer in #3 is the way it is. I recommend you use in particular economic analyses including competition, such as perfect versus imperfect competition, supply & demand theory, and price collusion. Also, do check out a study of the ATM industry, which you might get some ideas from regarding writing style and analysis:

http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2005/el2005-36.html

I further recommend, that you do the following google searches: use these words: pricing imperfect competition, multinational firms pricing and see what you can find.

5. Here describe an actual investigation with the store manager (or other insider) about price setting.

6. Here include your conclusions and your opinion as to whether the assignment was useful or not. Please include here a discussion of how your expectations about economics were fulfilled (or not) by your empirical discoveries in this research.

Make sure at least one manager (insider) person will talk to you before choosing your topic!

Good luck and begin your research by clicking on the links below:

Start your research here: perfect competition

Monopoly

Oligopoly

Monopolistic