EAP-Assignment-Review

One of my favorite books in the field of economics is Microeconomics written by Robert Pindyck and Daniel Rubinfeld. At first, as an “Intermediate Economics” book, this book has a good organization, and never delivers too many theories and mathematical calculations to readers, which make it easier for a beginner to get some useful theoretical information. In addition, unlike most outdated economics textbooks today, it has a wonderful coverage of modern topics, such as Game theory and Behavioral. Also, the abundance of examples and the clarity of explanation are great advantages of this book, improving undergraduate students’ ability to apply theories in the real world. By the way, I really appreciate the graphs and tables in this book.  It also has some tiny disadvantages, for example, it does not show the mathematical calculations behind some models, and just indicating the intuitions of these models may confuse readers. There are not enough exercises and problem sets in this book, and it does not offer the solutions to all problems, thus causing the difficulties for students to prepare for examinations.  In a word, it is a very good book for beginners and undergraduate students in economics programs. Although the knowledge it covered is not enough for a PHD student which need to do a lot of mathematical calculations and develop models, it is still a useful book for PHD students to do some review and keep pace with the development of microeconomics.

EAP-Assignment- Definition

Capital:

Political science:

In political science, capital is known as a city serving as a seat of government.

Linguistics:

Capital is defined as a large alphabetic character used as the first letter in writing or printing proper names and sometimes for emphasis.

Economics:

Capital in the field of economics is generally referred to as wealth or resource in the form of money or property owned by a person or business, which can bring the owner income.

Model:

Generally, a model is known as a person who poses for a photographer or painter or sculptor. And in a company, it may be regarded as a type of product. However, in the fields of economics and mathematics, it is referred to as a simplified description of a complex entity or process, and with the help of models, we can find the right methods to solve problems in our real life.

References-EAP-Assignment

2 articles related to "Emerging Technologies and the global Crisis of maturity”:

 1. Strobe Talbott. (2008). The great experiment: the story of ancient empires, modern states, and the quest for a global nation. New York : Simon & Schuster.2008.

Reason:

In the paragraph of “Scenario 2030: Global Consciousness”, the author of "Emerging Technologies and the global Crisis of maturity” cites some sentences from this book to show present opinions on global unity.

2. William E. Halal. (2009). The automation of thought: information technology holds the key to global maturity. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management: Vol. 21, No. 2, 277–280. doi:10.1080/09537320802625363

Reason:

This article was written by the same author. And it introduces The TechCast Project, Global crisis of maturity, and the life cycle of evolution, which are similar to “Emerging Technologies and the global Crisis of maturity”. It can be used to support "Emerging Technologies and the global Crisis of maturity”.

Assignment-Summarization of listening material

Science changed the world in some unprecedented or unwanted ways, which makes this century a challenge. Even tiny probability of catastrophe caused by technical misadventure would lead to serious results. If we want to enjoy the benefits from science, we have to accept such risks. But we can choose to control science rather than let things drift along, and scientists in different areas should take the responsibility. Without human’s activities, earth’s appearance would have changed very gradually, now as the population rose, the change has accelerated, and many unpredictable things happened. It is time for us to learn humane, global and farseeing from the old Einstein to support civilization to survive.

Class Note-Taking, EAP assignment 2

Representative Consumer Behavior

(1) Consumer preferences

(ⅰ) Basic assumptions

(a) Complete: (C1, L1)>(C2,L2), (C2,L2)>(C1,L1),(C1,L1)=(C2,L2)

(b) Consistency: If (C1, L1)> (C2, L2), then (C2, L2) not true

(c) Transitivity: If (C1, L1)> (C2, L2), (C2, L2)> (C3, L3), then (C1, L1)> (C3, L3)

            (d) More is better

     (ⅱ) Indifference curves: Convex

(ⅲ) Indifference map: All combinations of goods/services

(ⅳ) Marginal rate of substitution: Diminishing

          

(2) Budget Constraints

      (ⅰ) Basic assumptions 

(a)    consumers are price taker

(b)    C consumption good: numeraire

(c)    L leisure good: opportunity cost = wage rate W

(d)    Time constraint: H=L+N  Income Tax: T

   Rental rate: R   Capital: K

     (ⅱ) Total income = Total expenditure

                  WH+RK-T = C+WL

                  C = -WL+WH+RK-T

(3) Consumer Choice

      (ⅰ) Max U(C, L): S.T. W (H-L) +RK-T=C

      (ⅱ) Using Lagrange Function 

   

   (ⅲ) Optional Choice

   

            

Shan Li's writing assignment-week 1

Generally, consumers prefer one good to another, and prefer more of any good to less. Given preference and limited incomes, consumers can choose between market baskets containing different amount and types of goods, which will affect their satisfaction.  In economics, utility is a measure of such satisfaction, affected by consumption of various goods and services, explaining economic behavior in terms of attempts to maximize one’s satisfaction. There are two kinds of utility, cardinal and ordinal utility. Cardinal utility describes the extent to which one market basket is preferred to another, however ordinal utility places market baskets in the order of most preferred to least preferred, but it does not indicate how much one market basket is preferred to another. Although many economists think that cardinal utility can easily be calculated and understood, other economists prefer to use ordinal utility and argue that calculation of utility is meaningless, because it is difficult to translate people’s desire or satisfaction into cardinal numbers. For example, suppose an apple has a utility of 20 units, a peach has a utility of 40 units, and a pear has a utility of 60 units to a typical consumer, when speaking of cardinal utility, it could be concluded that the pear is better than the peach by exactly the same amount by which the peach is better than the apple. If we use ordinal utility, it would only be possible to say that the pear is preferred to the peach to the apple, but no more. However, in real life, it is hard for us to make sure that the quantitative relations when we using cardinal utility are exist or exact. So using ordinal utility to rank market baskets is enough. As for the tending to aggregate utilities across persons by dealing with cardinal utilities, the argument against this is that interpersonal comparisons of utility are improper because there is no good way to interpret how different consumers value market baskets.