Week 1: Lecture 1 — What Is a Price?

The opening lecture. Five things "price" can mean for the same object, the Week 1 comparison trick, and the $249 headphones this semester keeps returning to.

27 July 2026

Open the slides

This lecture is the live version of Week 1: the same five readings of “price” (sticker, reference, sale, market, willingness to pay), the same was-$200-now-$100-vs-$95 comparison, and the first mention of the headphones this course spends the rest of the semester pricing properly. The deck below gives the main argument; the week page gives the detail and the worked example.

Outline#

• why a single object can carry five different “prices” at once
• the was-$200/now-$100 vs $95 comparison, worked through live
• introducing the running scenario: a pair of $249 headphones
• what to read before Week 2 (unit price)