OS Microeconomics 2e

Table of Contents

• • Preface

• Welcome to Economics!

• • Introduction
  • What Is Economics, and Why Is It Important?
  • Microeconomics and Macroeconomics
  • How Economists Use Theories and Models to Understand Economic Issues
  • How To Organize Economies: An Overview of Economic Systems

• Choice in a World of Scarcity

• • Introduction to 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

• • Introduction to 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

• • Introduction to 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

• • Introduction to 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

• • Introduction to Consumer Choices
  • Consumption Choices
  • How Changes in Income and Prices Affect Consumption Choices
  • Behavioral Economics: An Alternative Framework for Consumer Choice

• Production, Costs, and Industry Structure

• • Introduction to Production, Costs, and Industry Structure
  • Explicit and Implicit Costs, and Accounting and Economic Profit
  • Production in the Short Run
  • Costs in the Short Run
  • Production in the Long Run
  • Costs in the Long Run

• Perfect Competition

• • Introduction to 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

• • Introduction to a Monopoly
  • How Monopolies Form: Barriers to Entry
  • How a Profit-Maximizing Monopoly Chooses Output and Price

• Monopolistic Competition and Oligopoly

• • Introduction to Monopolistic Competition and Oligopoly
  • Monopolistic Competition
  • Oligopoly

• Monopoly and Antitrust Policy

• • Introduction to Monopoly and Antitrust Policy
  • Corporate Mergers
  • Regulating Anticompetitive Behavior
  • Regulating Natural Monopolies
  • The Great Deregulation Experiment

• Environmental Protection and Negative Externalities

• • Introduction to 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

• • Introduction to Positive Externalities and Public Goods
  • Why the Private Sector Underinvests in Innovation
  • How Governments Can Encourage Innovation
  • Public Goods

• Labor Markets and Income

• • Introduction to Labor Markets and Income
  • The Theory of Labor Markets
  • Wages and Employment in an Imperfectly Competitive Labor Market
  • Market Power on the Supply Side of Labor Markets: Unions
  • Bilateral Monopoly
  • Employment Discrimination
  • Immigration

• Poverty and Economic Inequality

• • Introduction to 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

• Information, Risk, and Insurance

• • Introduction to Information, Risk, and Insurance
  • The Problem of Imperfect Information and Asymmetric Information
  • Insurance and Imperfect Information

• Financial Markets

• • Introduction to Financial Markets
  • How Businesses Raise Financial Capital
  • How Households Supply Financial Capital
  • How to Accumulate Personal Wealth

• Public Economy

• • Introduction to Public Economy
  • Voter Participation and Costs of Elections
  • Special Interest Politics
  • Flaws in the Democratic System of Government

• International Trade

• • Introduction to 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

• • Introduction to 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 Governments Enact Trade Policy: Globally, Regionally, and Nationally
  • The Tradeoffs of Trade Policy
• • The Use of Mathematics in Principles of Economics
  • Indifference Curves
  • Present Discounted Value