Microeconomics For Dummies

Your one-stop guide to understanding Microeconomics

Microeconomics For Dummies (with content specific to the UK reader) is designed to help you understand the economics of individuals. Using concise explanations and accessible content that tracks directly to an undergraduate course, this book provides a student-focused course supplement with an in-depth examination of each topic. This invaluable companion provides clear information and real-world examples that bring microeconomics to life and introduces you to all the key concepts. From supply and demand to market competition, you’ll understand how the economy works on an individual level, and how it affects you every day. Before long, you’ll be conversant in consumers, costs, and competition.

Microeconomics is all about the behaviour of individual people and individual firms. It sounds pretty straightforward, but it gets complicated early on. You may not be an economist, but if you’re a business student at university, the odds are you need to come to grips with microeconomics. That’s where Microeconomics For Dummies comes in, walking you through the fundamental concepts and giving you the understanding you need to master the material.

• Understand supply, demand, and equilibrium
• Examine the consumer decision making process
• Delve into elasticity and costs of production
• Learn why competition is healthy and monopolies are not

Even the brightest business students can find economics intimidating, but the material is essential to a solid grasp of how the business world works. The good news is that you’ve come to the right place.

Table of Contents

Part I: Getting Started with Microeconomics
Chapter 1: Discovering Why Microeconomics Is a Big Deal
Chapter 2: Considering Consumer Choice: Why Economists Find You Fascinating!
Chapter 3: Looking at Firm Behaviour: What They Are and What They Do

Part II: Doing the Best You Can: Consumer Theory
Chapter 4: Living a Life without Limits
Chapter 5: Considering the Art of the Possible: The Budget Constraint
Chapter 6: Achieving the Optimum in Spite of Constraints

Part III: Uncovering the Alchemy of Firms’ Inputs and Outputs
Chapter 7: Working with Different Costs and Cost Curves
Chapter 8: Squeezing Out Every Last Drop of Profit
Chapter 9: Supplying the Demanded Information on Supply and Demand
Chapter 10: Dreaming of the Consumer’s Delight: Perfect Competition

Part IV: Delving into Markets, Market Failure and Welfare Economics
Chapter 11: Stepping into the Real World: Oligopoly and Imperfect Competition
Chapter 12: Appreciating the Fundamental Theorems of Welfare Economics
Chapter 13: Controlling Markets with a Monopoly
Chapter 14: Examining Market Failure: Pollution and Parks
Chapter 15: Understanding the Dangers of Asymmetric Information

Part V: Thinking Strategically: Life Is Just a Game!
Chapter 16: Playing Games with Economic Theory
Chapter 17: Keeping Things Stable: The Nash Equilibrium
Chapter 18: Knowing How to Win at Auctions
Chapter 19: Deciphering the Signals: Threats and Benefits

Part VI: The Part of Tens
Chapter 20: Meeting Ten Great Microeconomists
Chapter 21: Ten Top Tips to Take Away