[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to Economic Concepts. My name is Chris Thomas, and I'll be your instructor in this online version of the Economic Concepts course. I have a great deal of experience in teaching this course. I hate to say it, sort of, but I've been here since 1982-- I know I don't look like it, but I have-- and I've taught this course for many years. I also have co-authored a textbook that's now in its 12th edition, and most of the material that you'll be using in your Pro Copy packet is taken from that textbook called Managerial Economics. 

One thing that we know about business economics and business decision making is that when you're reading Business Week, or Wall Street Journal, Fortune Forbes, and all of these business publications, one thing that tends to happen is over time you'll see that there tends to be a never-ending parade of business buzz words, and strategies du jour, and new breakthrough business ideas. That's not what this course is going to be about. This course is going to be about the timeless principles of maximizing profit, the things that are immutable, that you're going to learn today, and these will be valuable forever in your business career. 

You're going to like this course because it's about things that matter to making a profit. We're all about making a profit in this course. In this course, profit is not a four letter word, it's what we're trying to do. We want to maximize profit, and we're going to stay focused on that. 

We're not going to take a case study approach to strategy. Instead, we're actually going to learn the game theory. You're going to learn about Nash equilibrium. You're going to learn about sequential decision making, first and second mover advantages. You're going to learn about ways to motivate your rivals to behave-- if you will-- more cooperatively and less competitively, so that you get a basic foundation of strategic thinking that will never grow old, that will last for the rest of your career. 

We're going to give you, in this Economic Concepts course, the basic foundation of how to make profit maximizing decisions, but that's not the end. You're going to need to go on and take more specific courses in marketing, finance, and accounting, and management, to see how to bring together the concepts that you operationalize, and apply these concepts in a real world business setting. So I think that you're going to find this to be a very interesting course. I want you have a great semester, and enjoy.