Microeconomics (from Greek prefix micro- meaning "small" + "economics") is a branch of economics Economics is the social science that is concerned with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek οἰκονομία from οἶκος (oikos, "house") + νόμος (nomos, "custom" or "law"), hence "rules of the house(hold)". Current that studies how the individual parts of the economy, the household and the firms, make decisions to allocate limited resources,[1] typically in markets where goods or services are being bought and sold. Microeconomics examines how these decisions and behaviours affect the supply and demand Supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a market. It concludes that in a competitive market, price will function to equalize the quantity demanded by consumers, and the quantity supplied by producers, resulting in an economic equilibrium of price and quantity for goods and services, which determines prices, and how prices, in turn, determine the supply and demand of goods and services.[2][3]

This is a contrast to macroeconomics Macroeconomics (from Greek prefix "macr-" meaning "large" + "economics") is a branch of economics that deals with the performance, structure, behavior and decision-making of the entire economy, be that a national, regional, or the global economy. Along with microeconomics, macroeconomics is one of the two most general, which involves the "sum total of economic activity, dealing with the issues of growth Economic growth is a term used to indicate the increase of per capita gross domestic product or other measure of aggregate income. It is often measured as the rate of change in GDP. Economic growth refers only to the quantity of goods and services produced, inflation In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. When the price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, inflation is also an erosion in the purchasing power of money – a loss of real value in the internal medium of exchange and unit, and unemployment Unemployment occurs when a person is able and willing to work but currently without work. The prevalence of unemployment is usually measured using the unemployment rate, which is defined as the percentage of those in the labor force who are unemployed. The unemployment rate is also used in economic studies and economic indices such as the United.[2] Microeconomics also deals with the effects of national economic policies (such as changing taxation To tax is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law levels) on the before mentioned aspects of the economy.[4] Particularly in the wake of the Lucas critique The Lucas critique, named for Robert Lucas′ work on macroeconomic policymaking, supports that it is naive to try to predict the effects of a change in economic policy entirely on the basis of relationships observed in historical data, especially highly aggregated historical data, much of modern macroeconomic theory has been built upon 'microfoundations In economics, the term microfoundations refers to the microeconomic analysis of the behavior of individual agents such as households or firms that underpins a macroeconomic theory' — i.e. based upon basic assumptions about micro-level behaviour.

One of the goals of microeconomics is to analyze market A market is any one of a variety of different systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby persons trade, and goods and services are exchanged, forming part of the economy. It is an arrangement that allows buyers and sellers to exchange things. Competition is essential in markets, and separates market from trade mechanisms that establish relative prices Relative price is the price of a commodity such as a good or service in terms of another; i.e., the ratio of two prices. A relative price may be expressed in terms of a ratio between any two prices or the ratio between the price of one particular good and a weighted average of all other goods available in the market. A relative price is an amongst goods and services and allocation of limited resources amongst many alternative uses. Microeconomics analyzes market failure In economics, a market failure occurs when there is an inefficient allocation of goods and services in a market. That is, there exists another outcome where market participants' overall gains from the new outcome outweigh their losses . Market failures can be viewed as scenarios where individuals' pursuit of pure self-interest leads to results, where markets fail to produce efficient results, and describes the theoretical conditions needed for perfect competition In economics, perfect competition occurs in markets in which no participant has market power. Because the conditions for perfect competition are strict, there are few if any perfectly competitive markets. Nonetheless, the concept of perfect competition can serve as a useful benchmark against which to measure real life, imperfectly competitive. Significant fields of study in microeconomics include general equilibrium General equilibrium theory is a branch of theoretical neoclassical economics. It seeks to explain the behavior of supply, demand and prices in a whole economy with several or many markets, by seeking to prove that equilibrium prices for goods exist and that all prices are at equilibrium, hence general equilibrium, in contrast to partial, markets under asymmetric information In economics and contract theory, information asymmetry deals with the study of decisions in transactions where one party has more or better information than the other. This creates an imbalance of power in transactions which can sometimes cause the transactions to go awry. Examples of this problem are adverse selection and moral hazard. Most, choice under uncertainty Uncertainty is a term used in subtly different ways in a number of fields, including philosophy, physics, statistics, economics, finance, insurance, psychology, sociology, engineering, and information science. It applies to predictions of future events, to physical measurements already made, or to the unknown and economic applications of game theory Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that is used in the social sciences, most notably in economics, as well as in biology , engineering, political science, international relations, computer science, and philosophy. Game theory attempts to mathematically capture behavior in strategic situations, or games, in which an individual's success. Also considered is the elasticity In economics, elasticity is the ratio of the percent change in one variable to the percent change in another variable. It is a tool for measuring the responsiveness of a function to changes in parameters in a unit-less way. Frequently used elasticities include price elasticity of demand, price elasticity of supply, income elasticity of demand, of products within the market system.

Contents

Assumptions and definitions

The theory of supply and demand Supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a market. It concludes that in a competitive market, price will function to equalize the quantity demanded by consumers, and the quantity supplied by producers, resulting in an economic equilibrium of price and quantity usually assumes that markets are perfectly competitive In economics, perfect competition occurs in markets in which no participant has market power. Because the conditions for perfect competition are strict, there are few if any perfectly competitive markets. Nonetheless, the concept of perfect competition can serve as a useful benchmark against which to measure real life, imperfectly competitive. This implies that there are many buyers and sellers in the market and none of them has the capacity to significantly influence prices of goods and services. In many real-life transactions, the assumption fails because some individual buyers or sellers have the ability to influence prices. Quite often a sophisticated analysis is required to understand the demand-supply equation of a good model. However, the theory works well in simple situations.

Mainstream economics Mainstream economics is a loose term used to refer to the non-heterodox economics taught in prominent universities. It is most closely associated with neoclassical economics, or more precisely by the neoclassical synthesis, which combines neoclassical approach to microeconomics with Keynesian approach to macroeconomics does not assume a priori The terms a priori and a posteriori ("subsequent to") are used in philosophy (epistemology) to distinguish two types of knowledge, justifications or arguments. A priori knowledge or justification is independent of experience (for example 'All bachelors are unmarried'); a posteriori knowledge or justification is dependent on experience or that markets are preferable to other forms of social organization. In fact, much analysis is devoted to cases where so-called market failures In economics, a market failure occurs when there is an inefficient allocation of goods and services in a market. That is, there exists another outcome where market participants' overall gains from the new outcome outweigh their losses . Market failures can be viewed as scenarios where individuals' pursuit of pure self-interest leads to results lead to resource allocation Resource allocation is used to assign the available resources in an economic way. It is part of resource management. In project management, resource allocation is the scheduling of activities and the resources required by those activities while taking into consideration both the resource availability and the project time that is suboptimal by some standard (highways are the classic example, profitable to all for use but not directly profitable for anyone to finance). In such cases, economists may attempt to find policies that will avoid waste directly by government control, indirectly by regulation that induces market participants to act in a manner consistent with optimal welfare, or by creating "missing markets A missing market is a situation in microeconomics where a competitive market allowing the exchange of a commodity would be Pareto-efficient, but no such market exists" to enable efficient trading where none had previously existed. This is studied in the field of collective action As an explanation of social movements, an inquiry into collective action involves examining those factors that cause the setting of standards of social integration, as well as those factors which lead to standards of deviance and conflict. An explanation of a collective action in sociology will involve the explanation of those things which are. It also must be noted that "optimal welfare" usually takes on a Paretian Pareto efficiency, or Pareto optimality, is a concept in economics with applications in all areas of the discipline as well as engineering and other social sciences. The term is named after Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist who used the concept in his studies of economic efficiency and income distribution. Informally, Pareto efficient norm, which in its mathematical application of Kaldor-Hicks Method Kaldor-Hicks efficiency is a measure of economic efficiency that captures some of the intuitive appeal of Pareto efficiency, but has less stringent criteria and is hence applicable to more circumstances. Under Kaldor-Hicks efficiency, an outcome is considered more efficient if a Pareto optimal outcome can be reached by arranging sufficient, does not stay consistent with the Utilitarian norm within the normative side of economics which studies collective action, namely public choice. Market failure in positive economics (microeconomics) is limited in implications without mixing the belief of the economist and his or her theory.

The demand for various commodities by individuals is generally thought of as the outcome of a utility-maximizing process. The interpretation of this relationship between price and quantity demanded of a given good is that, given all the other goods and constraints, this set of choices is that one which makes the consumer happiest.

Modes of operation

It is assumed that all firms are following rational decision-making, and will produce at the profit-maximizing output. Given this assumption, there are four categories in which a firm's profit may be considered.

Opportunity cost

Main article: Opportunity cost Opportunity cost is the cost related to the next-best choice available to someone who has picked between several mutually exclusive choices. It is a key concept in economics. It has been described as expressing "the basic relationship between scarcity and choice." The notion of opportunity cost plays a crucial part in ensuring that

Opportunity cost of an activity (or goods) is equal to the best next alternative foregone. Although opportunity cost can be hard to quantify, the effect of opportunity cost is universal and very real on the individual level. In fact, this principle applies to all decisions, not just economic ones. Since the work of the Austrian The Austrian School is a heterodox school of economic thought that emphasizes the spontaneous organizing power of the price mechanism. Its name derives from the identity of its founders and early supporters, who were citizens of the old Austrian Habsburg Empire, including Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek economist Friedrich von Wieser, opportunity cost has been seen as the foundation of the marginal theory of value Marginalism is the use of marginal concepts within economics. The central concept of marginalism proper is that of marginal utility, but marginalists following the lead of Alfred Marshall were further heavily dependent upon the concept of marginal physical productivity in their explanation of cost; and the neoclassical tradition that emerged from.

Opportunity cost is one way to measure the cost of something. Rather than merely identifying and adding the costs of a project, one may also identify the next best alternative way to spend the same amount of money. The forgone profit of this next best alternative is the opportunity cost of the original choice. A common example is a farmer that chooses to farm her or his land rather than rent it to neighbors, wherein the opportunity cost is the forgone profit from renting. In this case, the farmer may expect to generate more profit alone. Similarly, the opportunity cost of attending university A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is a corporation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education. The word university is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, roughly meaning "community of is the lost wages a student could have earned in the workforce, rather than the cost of tuition, books, and other requisite items (whose sum makes up the total cost of attendance). The opportunity cost of a vacation in the Bahamas The Bahamas (pronounced /ðə bəˈhɑːməz/ ), officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an English-speaking country consisting of 29 islands, 661 cays, and 2,387 islets (rocks). It is located in the Atlantic Ocean north of Cuba, Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti) and the Caribbean Sea, northwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands, and might be the down payment money Money is any object that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context. The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, occasionally, a standard of deferred payment for a house.

Note that opportunity cost is not the sum of the available alternatives, but rather the benefit of the single, best alternative. Possible opportunity costs of the city's decision to build the hospital on its vacant land are the loss of the land for a sporting center, or the inability to use the land for a parking lot, or the money that could have been made from selling the land, or the loss of any of the various other possible uses—but not all of these in aggregate. The true opportunity cost would be the forgone profit of the most lucrative of those listed.

One question that arises here is how to assess the benefit of disse must determine a dollar value associated with each alternative to facilitate comparison and assess opportunity cost, which may be more or less difficult depending on the things we are trying to compare. For example, many decisions involve environmental impacts whose dollar value is difficult to assess because of scientific uncertainty. Valuing a human life or the economic impact of an Arctic oil spill involves making subjective choices with ethical implications.

It is imperative to understand that nothing is free. No matter what one chooses to do, he or she is always giving something up in return. An example of opportunity cost is deciding between going to a concert and doing homework. If one decides to go the concert, then he or she is giving up valuable time to study, but if he or she chooses to do homework then the cost is giving up the concert. Opportunity Cost is vital in understanding microeconomics and decisions that are made.

Opportunity cost principle

Opportunity cost principle argues that a decision to accept an employment for any factor of production is profitable if the total reward of the factor in that occupation is greater or at least no less than the factor's opportunity cost. Opportunity cost being the loss of the reward in the nest best use of that resource.

Applied microeconomics

Applied microeconomics includes a range of specialized areas of study, many of which draw on methods from other fields. Applied work often uses little more than the basics of price theory, supply and demand Supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a market. It concludes that in a competitive market, price will function to equalize the quantity demanded by consumers, and the quantity supplied by producers, resulting in an economic equilibrium of price and quantity. Industrial organization Industrial organization is a field of economics that studies the strategic behavior of firms, the structure of markets and their interactions. The study of industrial organization adds to the perfectly competitive model real-world frictions such as limited information, transaction cost, cost of adjusting prices, government actions, and barriers to and regulation examines topics such as the entry and exit of firms, innovation, role of trademarks. Law and economics Law and economics is an approach to legal theory that applies methods of economics to law. It includes the use of economic concepts to explain the effects of laws, to assess which legal rules are economically efficient, and to predict which legal rules will be promulgated applies microeconomic principles to the selection and enforcement of competing legal regimes and their relative efficiencies. Labor economics Labour economics seeks to understand the functioning and dynamics of the market for labour. Labour markets function through the interaction of workers and employers. Labour economics looks at the suppliers of labour services , the demanders of labour services (employers), and attempts to understand the resulting pattern of wages, employment, and examines wages, employment, and labor market dynamics. Public finance Public finance is a field of economics concerned with paying for collective or governmental activities, and with the administration and design of those activities. The field is often divided into questions of what the government or collective organizations should do or are doing, and questions of how to pay for those activities. The broader term, (also called public economics) examines the design of government tax and expenditure policies and economic effects of these policies (e.g., social insurance programs). Political economy Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government. Political economy originated in moral philosophy. It developed in the 18th century as the study of the economies of states—polities, hence political economy examines the role of political institutions in determining policy outcomes. Health economics Health economics is a branch of economics concerned with issues related to scarcity in the allocation of health and health care. In broad terms, health economists study the functioning of the health care system and the private and social causes of health-affecting behaviors such as smoking examines the organization of health care systems, including the role of the health care workforce and health insurance programs. Urban economics Urban Economics is broadly the economic study of urban areas. As such, it involves using the tools of economics to analyze urban issues such as crime, education, public transit, housing, and local government finance. More narrowly, it is a branch of microeconomics that studies urban spatial structure and the location of households and firms. Much, which examines the challenges faced by cities, such as sprawl, air and water pollution, traffic congestion, and poverty, draws on the fields of urban geography and sociology. The field of financial economics Financial economics is the branch of economics concerned with "the allocation and deployment of economic resources, both spatially and across time, in an uncertain environment". It is additionally characterised by its "concentration on monetary activities", in which "money of one type or another is likely to appear on both examines topics such as the structure of optimal portfolios, the rate of return to capital, econometric analysis of security returns, and corporate financial behavior. The field of economic history Economic history is the study of how economic phenomena evolved from a historical perspective. Analysis in economic history is undertaken using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and by applying economic theory to historical situations. The topic includes business history, financial history and overlaps with areas of social examines the evolution of the economy and economic institutions, using methods and techniques from the fields of economics, history, geography, sociology, psychology, and political science.

References

  1. ^ Marchant, Mary A.; Snell, William M.. "Macroeconomic and International Policy Terms". University of Kentucky The University of Kentucky, also known as UK, is a public, co-educational, university, and is one of the state's two land-grant universities, located in Lexington, Kentucky. Founded in 1865 by John Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky, the university is the largest in the Commonwealth by enrollment, with 27,209 students,. http://www.ca.uky.edu/agc/pubs/aec/aec75/aec75.pdf. Retrieved 2007-05-04.
  2. ^ a b "Economics Glossary". Monroe County Women's Disability Network. http://www.mcwdn.org/ECONOMICS/EcoGlossary.html. Retrieved 2008-02-22.
  3. ^ "Social Studies Standards Glossary". New Mexico Public Education Department. http://web.archive.org/web/20070808200604/http://nmlites.org/standards/socialstudies/glossary.html. Retrieved 2008-02-22.
  4. ^ "Glossary". ECON100. http://www.econ100.com/eu5e/open/glossary.html. Retrieved 2008-02-22.

Further reading

External links

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of Microeconomics
Microeconomics
Major topics Scarcity · Opportunity cost · Supply and demand · Elasticity · Economic surplus · Economic shortage · Aggregation problem · Consumer theory · Theory of the firm · Game theory · Market structure · Welfare economics · Market failure
Related List of topics in industrial organization
Economics
Macroeconomics Adaptive expectations · Balance of payments · Central bank · Currency · Gold standard · Gresham's Law · Inflation · IS/LM model · Money · Measures of national income and output · Monetary policy · National Income and Product Accounts · Purchasing power parity · Rational Expectations · Reaganomics · Recession · Unemployment · Development · List of economics topics · List of economic geography topics · List of international trade topics · Publications
Microeconomics Scarcity · Opportunity cost · Supply and demand · Elasticity · Economic surplus · Economic shortage · Aggregate demand · Consumer theory · Market form · Welfare · Market failure
Sub-disciplines International · Development · Labor · Environmental · Institutional · Normative · Behavioural · Experimental · Financial · Industrial organization · Public finance · Economic psychology · Economic sociology · Economic geography · Positive · Law and economics · Political economy
Methodologies Econometrics · Computational economics · Heterodox economics
History Ancient economic thought · Classical economics · Marxian economics · Neo-classical economics · Institutional economics · Keynesian economics · Chicago School of economics · Austrian School of economics
Famous economists Adam Smith · David Ricardo · Karl Marx · John Maynard Keynes · Milton Friedman · Ludwig von Mises · Ragnar Frisch · Paul Samuelson · more

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Do you need math higher than Algebra for Microeconomics?
Q. Do you need math higher than Algebra for Microeconomics 2301? It's supposed to be a beginning Microeconomics class, but I'm an English Major who needs to take another class as an elective and this is the only one avaliable at the slot that I have free. I've taken college algebra, but nothing higher. Will I be able to do the math in the class with only college algebra as my previous math level? There were no prerequisites listed.
Asked by afk - Sat Sep 13 01:00:29 2008 - - 3 Answers - 0 Comments

A. what are the prerequisites? it usually tells you if you need a higher level math class. i wouldn't think so though. i took marco and it really wasn't all that bad if there are none listed, i'm sure you'll be fine. it's mostly just adding and subtracting numbers.
Answered by Tessa - Sat Sep 13 01:03:40 2008

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