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Student grades will be based on:
The midterm exam is scheduled for Thursday, March 12, at the regular class hour and regular class meeting place.
The midterm exam will be a closed book exam covering the following required class materials through the last class meeting prior to the midterm exam day:
Packets of paper for the midterm exam will be distributed in class, so blue books are not required. Calculators or other mechanical/electrical devices will not be needed and the use of mechanical/electrical devices during the exam will not be permitted.
The selection of questions for the midterm exam will be strongly guided by the "Key In-Class Discussion Topics" listed at the beginning of every section of the on-line Econ 308 syllabus.
You should expect to be asked to discuss and illustrate, with clearly explained examples, a selection of the key concepts covered in the required class materials. Examples of such concepts include: a complex system; complex adaptive system; cellular automaton; game of life; Schelling Segregation Game; self-organized critical state; power law; Per Bak's Sand Pile Model; experimental design; sample mean; sample standard deviation; histogram; agent; object-oriented programming; object; class; interface; encapsulation; inheritance; composition; agent-oriented programming; market; bilateral trade; intermediated trade; broker; dealer; one-sided posted-offer auction; double auction; seller reservation value; buyer reservation value; true supply curve (individual vs. total); true demand curve (individual vs. total); competitive market clearing point; buyer surplus; seller surplus; total net surplus; true versus expressed (i.e., reported) supply and demand curves; market efficiency; market advantage; market power; price taking versus price setting; price discovery; profits; game theory; pure strategy; mixed strategy; payoff matrix; Nash equilibrium; dominant strategy; Pareto efficiency; Pareto domination; coordination failure; market game; ZI-U trader; ZI-C trader; simultaneous-move (decision) game; one-stage versus iterated game, Prisoner's Dilemma game; Tit-for-Tat strategy; Chicken Game; Stag-Hunt Game; embodied cognition; reinforcement learning representations for computational agents.
You should expect to be asked to summarize, discuss, and critique some of the key findings and/or conclusions highlighted in the required class materials.
You should expect to be asked to carry out some kind of exercise or analysis for one or more of the various models covered in the required class materials. These models inlude: cellular automata; the Schelling Segregation Model; Per Bak's Sand Pile Model; demand/supply market models such as the double auction; "zero-intelligence" market trading models; simple market game models; one-stage and multi-stage ("iterated") versions of simple 2-person games (e.g., the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Game as covered in assigned readings on Axelrod's tournaments).