This course covers the scope and sequence of most one-semester introductory microeconomics courses. We take a balanced approach to the theory and application of microeconomics concepts. The course uses conversational language and ample illustrations to explore economic theories and provides many examples using fictional and real-world applications. The course reflects recent developments and provides a profound background on diverse contributors and their impacts on economic thought and analysis.
Economics is probably not what you think. It is not primarily about money or finance. It is not primarily about business. It is not mathematics. What is it, then? It is both a subject area and a way of viewing the world. Economics studies how humans make decisions in the face of scarcity. These can be individual, family, business, or societal decisions. If you look around carefully, you will see that scarcity is a fact of life. Scarcity means that human wants for goods, services, and resources exceed what is available. Resources, such as labor, tools, land, and raw materials, are necessary to produce the goods and services we want, but they exist in limited supply. Of course, the ultimate scarce resource is time- everyone, rich or poor, has just 24 expendable hours in the day to earn income to acquire goods and services, for leisure time, or sleep. At any point in time, only a finite amount of resources are available.
This course uses the following textbook as a base under Creative Commons License 4.0
Textbook content produced by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Authors: David Shapiro, Daniel MacDonald, Steven A. Greenlaw
Publisher/website: OpenStax
Book title: Principles of Microeconomics 3e
Publication date: Dec 14, 2022
Location: Houston, Texas