Microeconomics is a branch of 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.^[1]

This book is a derivative of OpenStax Principles of Microeconomics. You can download the original free of charge at https://openstax.org/details/books/principles-microeconomics.^[2]

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Welcome to Economics!
  • What Economics Is and Why It's Important
  • Microeconomics and Macroeconomics
  • How Economists Use Theories and Models to Understand Economic Issues
  • How Economies Can Be Organized: An Overview of Economic Systems
• Choice in a World of Scarcity
  • How Individuals Make Choices Based on Their Budget Constraint
  • The Production Possibilities Frontier and Social Choices
  • Confronting Objections to the Economic Approach
• Demand and Supply
  • Demand, Supply, and Equilibrium in Markets for Goods and Services
  • Shifts in Demand and Supply for Goods and Services
  • Changes in Equilibrium Price and Quantity: The Four-Step Process
  • Price Ceilings and Price Floors
  • Demand, Supply, and Efficiency
• Labor and Financial Markets
  • Demand and Supply at Work in Labor Markets
  • Demand and Supply in Financial Markets
  • The Market System as an Efficient Mechanism for Information
• Elasticity
  • Price Elasticity of Demand and Price Elasticity of Supply
  • Polar Cases of Elasticity and Constant Elasticity
  • Elasticity and Pricing
  • Elasticity in Areas Other Than Price
• Consumer Choices
  • Consumption Choices
  • How Changes in Income and Prices Affect Consumption Choices
  • Labor-Leisure Choices
  • Intertemporal Choices in Financial Capital Markets
• Cost and Industry Structure
  • Explicit and Implicit Costs, and Accounting and Economic Profit
  • The Structure of Costs in the Short Run
  • The Structure of Costs in the Long Run
• Perfect Competition
  • Perfect Competition and Why It Matters
  • How Perfectly Competitive Firms Make Output Decisions
  • Entry and Exit Decisions in the Long Run
  • Efficiency in Perfectly Competitive Markets
• Monopoly
  • How Monopolies Form: Barriers to Entry
  • How a Profit-Maximizing Monopoly Chooses Output and Price
• Monopolistic Competition and Oligopoly
  • Monopolistic Competition
  • Oligopoly
• Monopoly and Antitrust Policy
  • Corporate Mergers
  • Regulating Anticompetitive Behavior
  • Regulating Natural Monopolies
  • The Great Deregulation Experiment
• Environmental Protection and Negative Externalities
  • The Economics of Pollution
  • Command-and-Control Regulation
  • Market-Oriented Environmental Tools
  • The Benefits and Costs of U.S Environmental Laws
  • International Environmental Issues
  • The Tradeoff between Economic Output and Environmental Protection
• Positive Externalities and Public Goods
  • Why the Private Sector Under Invests in Innovation
  • How Governments Can Encourage Innovation
  • Public Goods
• Poverty and Economic Inequality
  • Drawing the Poverty Line
  • The Poverty Trap
  • The Safety Net
  • Income Inequality: Measurement and Causes
  • Government Policies to Reduce Income Inequality
• Issues in Labor Markets: Unions, Discrimination, Immigration
  • Unions
  • Employment Discrimination
  • Immigration
• Information, Risk, and Insurance
  • The Problem of Imperfect Information and Asymmetric Information
  • Insurance and Imperfect Information
• Financial Markets
  • How Businesses Raise Financial Capital
  • How Households Supply Financial Capital
  • How to Accumulate Personal Wealth
• Public Economy
  • Voter Participation and Costs of Elections
  • Special Interest Politics
  • Flaws in the Democratic System of Government
• International Trade
  • Absolute and Comparative Advantage
  • What Happens When a Country Has an Absolute Advantage in All Goods
  • Intra-industry Trade between Similar Economies
  • The Benefits of Reducing Barriers to International Trade
• Globalization and Protectionism
  • Protectionism: An Indirect Subsidy from Consumers to Producers
  • International Trade and Its Effects on Jobs, Wages, and Working Conditions
  • Arguments in Support of Restricting Imports
  • How Trade Policy Is Enacted: Globally, Regionally, and Nationally
  • The Tradeoffs of Trade Policy
• Appendices
  • The Use of Mathematics in Principles of Economics
  • Indifference Curves
  • Present Discounted Value

References