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LESSON 2
MICROECONOMICS
Microeconomics deals with supply and demand, and with
the way they interact in various markets. Microeconomic
analysis lies at the center of most of the recognized subfields of
economics. Labor economics, for example, is based largely on
the analysis of the supply and demand for labor of different
types. The field of industrial organization deals with the
different mechanisms (monopoly, cartels and different types of
competitive behavior) by which goods and services are sold.
International economics worries about the demand and supply
of individual traded commodities, as well as of a country’s
exports and imports taken as a whole. It also deals with the
demand for and supply of foreign exchange. Agricultural
economics deals with the demand and supply of agricultural
products, and of farmland, farm labor, and the other factors of
production involved in agriculture.
Public finance looks at how the government enters the scene.
Traditionally, its focus was on taxes, but more recently, public
finance has reached into the expenditure side as well, attempting to
analyze the costs and benefits of different public programs. Applied
welfare economics deals with the costs and benefits of just about
anything – public projects, taxes on commodities, taxes on factors
of production (corporation income taxes, payroll taxes), agricultural
programs (like price supports and acreage controls), tariffs on
imports, foreign exchange controls, different forms of industrial
organization (like monopoly and oligopoly), and various aspects of
labor market behavior (like minimum wages, the monopoly power
of labor unions, and so on).
At the root of everything is supply and demand. In this
market process people try to get the most from what they have
to sell, and to satisfy their desires as much as possible. In other
words, people are maximizing their personal “utility,” or
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welfare. This process helps them to decide what they will
supply and what they will demand. The competitive supply
price represents value as seen by suppliers, and competitive
demand price represents value as seen by demanders.
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