Microeconomics: Competitive Markets

ECON 203 takes the intuitive supply-and-demand stories from your intro course and rebuilds them on a calculus foundation, treating consumers and firms as agents solving constrained optimization problems whose solutions you can actually compute and compare. Expect problem sets heavy on Lagrangians, comparative statics, and graph-and-algebra dissections of competitive markets, with applications stretching into taxation and trade. As the first half of the intermediate micro sequence, it sets up ECON 204 (general equilibrium and market failures) and supplies the optimization toolkit that nearly every upper-level economics elective quietly assumes you already own.