Microeconomics for Dummies

Learn to: Analyze how markets work and how they fail Achieve efficiency in a market Understand strategic interaction in the marketplace The fast and easy way to make microeconomics your minion The study of microeconomics isn't for the faint of heart. Luckily, this friendly guide is here to make it manageable, whether you're studying the subject for class or putting it to real-world use. Cutting through confusing jargon and complemented with lots of real-life examples, it helps you discover how individuals and businesses use microeconomics to analyze trends from the bottom up. Small units are a big deal -- find out how people and firms use microeconomics in order to make smart business decisions, how those decisions become markets, and what causes markets to fail Consider the consumer -- discover factors that affect consumer choices, how we deal with constraints, and how decisions affect the greater economy Inside a firm's decision-making -- make sense of costs and cost curves, profit maximization, supply and demand, equilibrium analysis, and the effect of competition The bigger picture -- examine the fundamental theorems of welfare economics, what a monopoly creates, and what happens when the market doesn't make what we want Strategize it -- discover how game theory, auction theory, and the Nash Equilibrium come into play in the realm of microeconomics Open the book and find: The principal areas of microeconomics Key roles of decision-making, competition, and cooperation When a firm should shut down and exit - and when it should plow full-steam ahead with confidence How economists model a representative consumer Why some markets don't work well and others work nearly perfectly Ten great microeconomists worth knowing