Microeconomics

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Microeconomics

Microeconomics is one of the main fields of the social science of economics. It considers the behaviour of individual consumers, firms and industries. (Contrast macroeconomics.)

One of the goals of microeconomics is to analyze market mechanisms that establish relative prices amongst goods and services and allocation of limited resources amongst many alternative uses. Microeconomics analyses market failure, where markets fail to maximise welfare, as well as describing the theoretical conditions needed for perfect competition. Significant fields of study in microeconomics include markets under asymmetric information, choice under uncertainty and economic applications of game theory.

Assumptions and definitions

The theory of supply and demand usually assumes that markets are perfectly competitive. This implies that there are many buyers and sellers in the market and none of them have the capacity to significantly influence prices of goods and services. In many real-life transactions, the assumption fails because some individual buyers or sellers or groups of buyers or sellers do have the ability to influence prices. Quite often a sophisticated analysis is required to understand the demand-supply equation of a good. However, the theory works well in simple situations.

Mainstream economics does not assume a priori that markets are preferable to other forms of social organization. In fact, much analysis is devoted to cases where so-called market failures lead to resource allocation that is suboptimal by some standard (highways are the classic example, profitable to all for use but profitable for none to build). In such cases, economists may attempt to find policies that will avoid waste; directly by government control, indirectly by regulation that induces market participants to act in a manner consistent with optimal welfare, or by creating "missing" markets to enable efficient trading where none had previously existed. This is studied in the field of collective action.

The demand for various commodities by individuals is generally thought of as the outcome of a utility-maximizing process. The interpretation of this relationship between price and quantity demanded of a given good is that, given all the other goods and constraints, this set of choices is that one which makes the consumer happiest.

Modes of Operation

It is assumed that all firms are following rational decision-making, and will produce at the profit-maximizing output. Given this assumption, there are four categories in which a firm's profit may be considered.

A firm is said to be making an economic profit when its average total cost is less than the price of the product at the profit-maximizing output. The economic profit is equal to the quantity output multiplied by the difference between the average total cost and the price.

A firm is said to be making a normal profit when its economic profit equals zero. This occurs where average total cost equals price at the profit-maximizing output.

If the price is between average total cost and average variable cost at the profit-maximizing output, then the firm is said to be in a loss-minimizing condition. The firm should still continue to produce, however, since its loss would be larger if it was to stop producing. By continuing production, the firm can offset its variable cost and at least part of its fixed cost, but by stopping completely it would lose equivalent of its entire fixed cost.

If the price is below average variable cost at the profit-maximizing output, the firm is said to be in shutdown. Losses are minimized by not producing at all, since any production would not generate returns significant enough to offset any fixed cost and part of the variable cost. By not producing, the firm loses only its fixed cost.

In economics, a market failure is a situation in which markets do not efficiently organize production or allocate goods and services to consumers (for example, a failure to allocate goods in a way some see as socially or morally preferable). To economists, the term would normally be applied to situations where the inefficiency is particularly dramatic, or when it is suggested that non-market institutions would provide a more desirable result. On the other hand, to many, market failures are situations where market forces do not serve the perceived "public interest". Here, the focus is on the economists' theories of market failure.

Economists use model-like theorems to explain or understand such cases. The two main reasons that markets fail are:

the inadequate expression of costs or benefits in prices and thus into microeconomic decision-making in markets.
sub-optimal market structures

In economics, information asymmetry occurs when one party to a transaction has more or better information than the other party. (It has also been called asymmetrical information and markets with asymmetrical information). Typically it is the seller that knows more about the product than the buyer, however, it is possible for the reverse to be true: for the buyer to know more than the seller.

Examples of situations where the seller usually has better information than the buyer are numerous but include used-car salespeople, stockbrokers, real estate agents, and life insurance transactions.

Examples of situations where the buyer usually has better information than the seller include estate sales as specified in a last will and testament.

This situation was first described by Kenneth J. Arrow in a seminal article on health care in 1963 entitled "Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care," in the American Economic Review.

George Akerlof later used the term asymmetric information in his 1970 work The Market for Lemons. He also noticed that, in such a market, the average value of the commodity tends to go down, even for those of perfectly good quality. It is even possible for the market to decay to the point of nonexistence.

Because of information asymmetry, unscrupulous sellers can "spoof" items (like software or computer games) and defraud the buyer. As a result, many people not willing to risk getting ripped off will avoid certain types of purchases, or will not spend as much for a given item.

Opportunity cost

Main article: Opportunity cost

The simplest way to estimate the opportunity cost of any single economic decision is to consider, "What is the next best alternative choice that could be made?" (This is even though most economic decisions involve multiple alternatives.) The opportunity cost of paying for college this semester could be the ability to make car payments. The opportunity cost of a vacation in the Bahamas could be the down payment money for a house.

Note that opportunity cost is not the sum of the available alternatives, but rather of benefit of the best alternative of them. The opportunity cost of the city's decision to build the hospital on its vacant land is the loss of the land for a sporting center, or the inability to use the land for a parking lot, or the money that could have been made from selling the land, or the loss of any of the various other possible uses -- but not all of these in aggregate.

Although opportunity cost can be hard to quantify, its effect is universal and very real on the individual level. The principle behind the economic concept of opportunity cost applies to all decisions, not just economic ones. Since the work of the Austrian economist Friedrich von Wieser, opportunity cost has been seen as the foundation of the marginal theory of value.

Taxonomy of Microeconomics

External links

AmosWEB GLOSS*arama - online economics dictionary

A free textbook of microeconomics, supplemented by software and data - Key concepts of microeconomics easily explained and thoroughly criticised.

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Assumptions and definitions

Modes of Operation

Opportunity cost

Taxonomy of Microeconomics

Fundamental concepts in microeconomics

Consumer theory''

Production and pricing theory

Welfare economics''

Industrial organization

Market failure

Financial economics

International trade

Methodology

External links