Microeconomics basics for academic students

Explore how individuals and societies allocate scarce resources through microeconomic decisions, highlighting opportunity cost and marginalism. Learn consumer and producer choice, budgeting limits, and basic to advanced microeconomics concepts.

Explore the difference between market and centrally planned economies, how prices arise from the market mechanism, and the role of theories, models, and positive versus normative analysis.

Analyze how supply and the supply curve link price to quantity supplied, and how cost of production shifts the curve while price changes move along it under government policies.

Explore demand and supply fundamentals, market mechanism, and how price and quantity are determined, including shifts, equilibrium, surplus, and shortages in a mixed economy.

Explore demand and the demand curve, showing how price and quantity demanded move inversely under the law of demand, and how income, tastes, expectations, and substitutes or complements shift demand.

Understand supply and quantity supplied and how the supply curve links price to production. See how price moves along the curve, while costs and technology shift the curve.

Explore the market mechanism, equilibrium, and how surplus and shortage arise when price moves from equilibrium, prompting adjustments in quantity demanded and quantity supplied toward a new equilibrium.

This lecture explains how market equilibrium price and quantity arise from the relative shifts in supply and demand and how income or input-price changes move the equilibrium.

Solve for the market clearing price and quantity by applying the demand and supply equations, given income equals 50.

Explore elasticity as the measure of how quantity demanded responds to price changes, and how a linear demand curve shows elastic, unit elastic, and inelastic regions.

Explore price, income, and cross-price elasticity of demand, from inelastic and infinitely elastic cases to substitutes and complements, and how these affect quantity demanded.

Derive linear demand and supply curves for cigarette market using elasticity values -0.5 (demand) and 0.6 (supply), with Q = A - BP and Q = C + P.

Explore consumer choice and behavior, examining preferences and budget constraints to understand income allocation, including indifference curves, marginal rate of substitution, and diminishing marginal utility for optimum consumer choice.

Explore within microeconomics basics how consumer preferences, budget constraints, and consumer choice drive income allocation to maximize satisfaction under price considerations.

Analyze how consumers rank and compare market baskets and select bundles of goods to maximize satisfaction. Learn why more is better and how indifference and successive preferences explain everyday choices.

Explore how indifference curves graphically represent consumer preferences between books and clothing, showing bundles that yield the same utility. Recognize rationality and why curve points are preferred to below.

Explore four key characteristics of indifference curves: why they slope downward, what indifference maps represent, why curves cannot intersect, and why they’re convex; introduce trade-offs and marginal rate of substitution.

Explain how the marginal rate of substitution shows how much clothing you give up for one more unit of food, and how this rate diminishes along the indifference curve.

Explore how producers decide levels of production, determine optimum production level, and adapt production with labor, materials, and technology, linking market supply to consumer behavior.

Explore how production technology, cost constraints, and input choices shape farm output. See how labor and capital tradeoffs determine costs and output under different price and technology conditions.

Explore how a single variable input—labor—changes output while capital remains fixed, highlighting average and marginal production, incremental gains, and diminishing returns.

Explore how to calculate average product and marginal product using output and labor input, showing how AP and MP change as labor increases and total output evolves.

Explore the cost of production in microeconomics, covering short-run and long-run costs, measuring costs, and key ideas like average and marginal product, diminishing returns, economies of scope, and opportunity cost.

Compare accounting cost and economic cost to understand production expenses. Recognize opportunity costs, such as foregone rents or time, and how depreciation and ownership affect true production costs.

Study fixed and variable costs and their impact on total cost, which equals fixed plus variable cost; costs appear fixed in the short run but vary in the long run.

Derive the farm's total cost and average cost functions from fixed cost 10,000 and marginal cost 1,000 per unit, yielding AFC = 10,000/Q and ATC = 1,000 + 10,000/Q.

Explore monopolistic competition, a market with many firms offering differentiated but similar products. Analyze product differentiation, free entry and exit, short-run and long-run dynamics, and elasticity with shampoo examples.

Compare monopoly, monopolistic competition, and oligopoly as market structures. See how a single seller contrasts with many differentiated producers and a two-firm duopoly.

Explore how differentiated products give monopolistic competition market power to charge higher prices in the short term, with marginal revenue below price and profits where marginal revenue equals marginal cost.

Explore short-run monopolistic competition, where elastic demand yields marginal revenue below price; profits may be abnormal, normal, or shutdown, free entry driving price to average cost and maintaining monopoly power.

Study oligopoly characteristics, including few firms, barriers to entry, and strategic price decisions. Explore Karnac models and how rival actions, price wars, and equilibrium shape output in interdependent markets.

Explore oligopoly competition through the Cournot model with two firms, deriving reaction curves and showing how each firm's profit-maximizing output depends on the other, yielding the Cournot equilibrium.

Demonstrates the Stackelberg model, where a leader sets output first and anticipates follower reactions. Contrasts with Bertrand, where firms set prices simultaneously for homogeneous goods.