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Index
Cover
Title Page
Table of Contents
Introduction
About This Book
Foolish Assumptions
Icons Used in This book
Beyond the Book
Where to Go from Here
Part I: Getting Started with Microeconomics
Chapter 1: Discovering Why Microeconomics Is a Big Deal
Peering into the Economics of Smaller Units
Making Decisions, Decisions and More Decisions!
Understanding the Problems of Competition and Co-operation
Investigating Why Markets Can Fail
Chapter 2: Considering Consumer Choice: Why Economists Find You Fascinating!
Studying Utility: Why People Choose What They Choose
Modelling Consumer Behaviour: Economic Agents
Pursuing Preferences and Investigating Indifferences
Chapter 3: Looking at Firm Behaviour: What They Are and What They Do
Delving into Firms and What They Do
Considering How Economists View Firms: The Black Box
From Firm to Company: Why People Form Limited Liability Companies
Part II: Doing the Best You Can: Consumer Theory
Chapter 4: Living a Life without Limits
Eating Until You’re Sick! Assuming that More Is Always Better
Deciding How Low You’ll Go! Marginal Utility
Chapter 5: Considering the Art of the Possible: The Budget Constraint
Taking It to the Limit! Introducing the Budget Constraint
Getting the Biggest Bang for Your Buck
Putting the Utility Model to Work
Chapter 6: Achieving the Optimum in Spite of Constraints
Investigating the Equilibrium: Coping with Price and Income Changes
Dealing with Price Changes for One Good
Discerning a Consumer’s Revealed Preference
Decomposing Income and Substitution Effects
Part III: Uncovering the Alchemy of Firms’ Inputs and Outputs
Chapter 7: Working with Different Costs and Cost Curves
Understanding Why Accountants and Economists View Costs Differently
Looking at a Firm’s Cost Structure
Relating Cost Structure to Profits
Chapter 8: Squeezing Out Every Last Drop of Profit
Asking Whether Firms Really Maximise Profits
Going Large! The Goal of Profit Maximisation
Slimming Down! Minimising Costs
Chapter 9: Supplying the Demanded Information on Supply and Demand
Producing Stuff to Sell: The Supply Curve
Giving the People What They Want: The Demand Curve
Identifying Where Supply and Demand Meet
Chapter 10: Dreaming of the Consumer’s Delight: Perfect Competition
Viewing the ‘Perfect’ in Perfect Competition
Putting the Conditions Together for the Perfectly Competitive Marketplace
Examining Efficiency and Perfect Competition
Part IV: Delving into Markets, Market Failure and Welfare Economics
Chapter 11: Stepping into the Real World: Oligopoly and Imperfect Competition
Outlining the Features of an Oligopoly
Discussing Three Different Approaches to Oligopoly
Making Your Firm Distinctive from the Competition
Chapter 12: Appreciating the Fundamental Theorems of Welfare Economics
Getting the Welfare Back into Welfare Economics
Understanding Why Partial Equilibrium Isn’t Enough
Trading Your Way to Efficiency with Two Fundamental Theorems
Chapter 13: Controlling Markets with a Monopoly
Entering the World of the Monopoly
Counting the Costs of Monopolies
Tackling Monopolies in the Real World
‘You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Monopoly’
Chapter 14: Examining Market Failure: Pollution and Parks
Coming to Grips with Externality: Too Much of a Bad Thing
Making the Market Produce What It Won’t: Public Goods
Chapter 15: Understanding the Dangers of Asymmetric Information
Seeing the Effects of Asymmetric Information
Changing Your Behaviour because of Asymmetric Information
Part V: Thinking Strategically: Life Is Just a Game!
Chapter 16: Playing Games with Economic Theory
Setting the Game: Mechanism Design
Locking Horns with the Prisoners’ Dilemma
Looking at Collective Action: The Stag Hunt
Annoying People with the Ultimatum Game
Getting out of the Dilemma by Repeating a Game
Chapter 17: Keeping Things Stable: The Nash Equilibrium
Defining the Nash Equilibrium Informally
Looking for Balance: Where a Nash Equilibrium Must Apply
Applying the Nash Equilibrium in Economics
Chapter 18: Knowing How to Win at Auctions
Spotting Different Kinds of Auction
Bidding for Beginners
Suffering from the Winner’s Curse
Chapter 19: Deciphering the Signals: Threats and Benefits
Refining the Nash Equilibrium to Deal with Threats
Responding to Positive Economic Signals
Part VI: The Part of Tens
Chapter 20: Meeting Ten Great Microeconomists
Alfred Marshall (1842–1924)
Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883–1950)
Gary S Becker (1930–2014)
Ronald Coase (1910–2013)
Elinor Ostrom (1933–2012)
William Vickrey (1914–96)
George Akerlof (born 1940)
James Buchanan (1919–2013)
William Baumol (born 1922)
Arthur Cecil Pigou (1877–1959)
Chapter 21: Ten Top Tips to Take Away
Respecting Choice
Pricing a Good: Difficult but not Impossible
Competing on Price or Quality
Seeking Real Markets’ Unique Features
Beating the Market in the Long Run is Very Difficult
Knowing a Tradeoff Always Exists Somewhere
Arguing about the Next Best Thing
Using Markets Isn’t Always Costless
Believing that Competition is Good – Usually
Getting Co-operation and Organisation in the World
Glossary
About the Authors
Cheat Sheet
Advertisement Page
Connect with Dummies
End User License Agreement
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