"Microeconomics is a branch of mainstream economics that studies the behavior of individuals and firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources and the interactions among these individuals and firms."
The study of how individuals and firms make decisions regarding the allocation of resources in markets.
Introduction to Microeconomics: This includes understanding the basic principles of microeconomics, such as the concepts of scarcity, opportunity cost, demand and supply, and equilibrium.
Elasticity: Elasticity is the responsiveness of demand or supply to changes in price, income, or other variables.
Market Structures: This includes the different types of market structures such as perfect competition, monopoly, monopolistic competition, and oligopoly.
Consumer Behavior: Consumer behavior covers how consumers make decisions about what to buy, including how they evaluate products and services, and how they respond to changes in prices.
Theory of Production and Cost: This includes a comprehensive analysis of the factors of production, such as labor and capital, and their relationship to the costs of producing a given product.
Market Failure: Markets do not always work perfectly, and economists study the different types of market failures such as externalities, information asymmetry, and public goods.
Game Theory: Game theory is the study of strategic decision making, and how it affects the behavior of individuals or groups in a given situation.
Law and Economics: This is an interdisciplinary field that examines how legal rules and regulations impact economic behavior, and vice versa.
International Trade: International trade deals with the exchange of goods and services across borders, and the economic forces that drive this exchange.
Labor Economics: Labor economics studies the behavior of workers and employers, how wages are determined, and how employment policies influence the labor market.
Public Finance: Public finance looks at the role of government in the economy, including how taxes, subsidies, and other government policies impact the allocation of resources.
Industrial Organization: This field analyzes the structure of industries and firms, how they compete and innovate, and how regulations affect their behavior.
Human Capital: Human capital refers to the skills, knowledge, and experience that workers possess, and how they contribute to economic growth and development.
Economic Development: Economic development looks at the process by which economies grow and develop, and how policy can influence this process.
Behavioral Economics: Behavioral economics draws on psychology and other social sciences to explain how individuals and groups make economic decisions, especially in situations of uncertainty or incomplete information.
Environmental Economics: This field examines the interaction between the economy and the natural environment, including the costs and benefits of policies aimed at protecting the environment.
Antitrust: The study of how monopolies and competition affect the economy.
Behavioral Economics: The study of how psychological and cognitive factors influence economic decisions.
Economic Regulation: The study of how government policies, such as taxes and subsidies, affect markets.
Environmental Economics: The study of how economic activity affects the natural environment.
Game Theory: The study of decision-making in situations where two or more people or organizations are interdependent.
Industrial Organization: The study of how firms compete with one another.
Intellectual Property: The study of how legal mechanisms protect and incentivize innovation.
International Trade: The study of the exchange of goods and services across national borders.
Labor Economics: The study of how workers and employers interact in the labor market.
Public Finance: The study of how government spending and taxation affect the economy.
Property Law: The study of how legal mechanisms protect and regulate property rights.
Tort Law: The study of how legal remedies are used to address harm caused by the actions of others.
"Microeconomics focuses on the study of individual markets, sectors, or industries as opposed to the national economy as a whole, which is studied in macroeconomics."
"One goal of microeconomics is to analyze the market mechanisms that establish relative prices among goods and services and allocate limited resources among alternative uses."
"Microeconomics shows conditions under which free markets lead to desirable allocations."
"It also analyzes market failure, where markets fail to produce efficient results."
"While microeconomics focuses on firms and individuals, macroeconomics focuses on the sum total of economic activity, dealing with the issues of growth, inflation, and unemployment—and with national policies relating to these issues."
"Microeconomics also deals with the effects of economic policies (such as changing taxation levels) on microeconomic behavior and thus on the aforementioned aspects of the economy."
"Much of modern macroeconomic theories has been built upon microfoundations—i.e., based upon basic assumptions about micro-level behavior."