Microeconomics for Dummies, 2nd U. S. Edition.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pepall, Lynne.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (339 pages)

Edition:

2nd ed.

Place of Publication:

Newark : John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2026.

Summary:

Find easy-to-follow coverage of microeconomics basics Microeconomics For Dummies, 2nd U.S.Edition demystifies the complex world of microeconomics, offering down-to-earth explanations and real-world applications that make microeconomics make sense to everyone.

Contents:

Intro

Title Page

Copyright Page

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Foolish Assumptions

Icons Used in This Book

Beyond the Book

Where to Go from Here

Part 1 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

Addressing how individuals and companies make decisions

Starting simply

Growing more complex

Seeing how decisions come together to make markets

Understanding the Problems of Competition and Cooperation

Realizing why authorities regulate competition

Considering monopoly: Regulation and antitrust

Chapter 2 Considering Consumer Choice: Why Economists Find You Fascinating

Studying Utility: Why People Choose What They Choose

Introducing the idea of utility

Contrasting two ways of approaching utility: Cardinal and ordinal

Modeling Consumer Behavior: Economic Agents

Acting rationally in economic terms: A mathematical tool

Addressing an objection to the representative economic agent

Pursuing Preferences and Investigating Indifferences

Becoming bothered with indifference curves

Bowing to convex curves

Staying interesting with monotonicity

Noting issues with the preference model

Chapter 3 Looking at the Behavior of Firms: What They Are and What They Do

Delving into Firms and What They Do

Recognizing the importance of profit

Discovering types of firms

Considering How Economists View Firms: The Black Box

Seeing why economists think as they do

Peering inside the black box: Technologies

Land: They ain't makin' any more of it

Labor: Getting the job done

Capital: Tangible and intangible

Minimizing costs

Maximizing profits

From Firm to Company: LLCs and the Firm's Boundaries.

Limiting liability

Recognizing the pros and cons

Part 2 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

Making your choice: The consumption bundle

Thinking about utility in another way: Possible sets

Drawing a utility function

Deciding How Low You'll Go: Marginal Utility

Considering the last in line: The marginal unit

Creating a formula to model utility

Chapter 5 Considering the Art of the Possible: The Budget Constraint

Taking It to the Limit: Introducing the Budget Constraint

Introducing the budget line

Shifting the curve when you get a raise

Twisting the curve when the price of one good changes

Pushing the line: Utility and the budget constraint

Getting the Biggest Bang for Your Buck

Exploring relative price changes with the numeraire

Using the budget line to look at taxes and subsidies

Recognizing two types of tax

Putting the Utility Model to Work

Chapter 6 Achieving the Optimum despite Constraints

Investigating the Equilibrium: Coping with Price and Income Changes

Dealing with Price Changes for One Good

Pivoting the budget line

Seeing substitution in practice

Adding in the income effect

Different strokes: Different goods have different income and substitution effects

Discerning a Consumer's Revealed Preference

Decomposing Income and Substitution Effects: The Slutsky Equation

Unpacking the effect of a price change in a model with two goods

Getting what you prefer

Developing the substitution effect in numbers

Meeting the useful demand function

Discerning the change in demand

Calculating the substitution effect from a demand function

Adding up the income effect

Putting the two effects together with the Slutsky equation.

Part 3 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

Taking in the big picture: Total costs

Measuring by unit: Average costs

Making use of average costs

Visualizing economies of scale by plotting average costs

Adding only the cost of the last unit: Marginal cost

Meeting marginal cost

Tracking where MC crosses the AVC and ATC curves

Putting it together: Cost structure of a simple firm

Relating Cost Structure to Profits

Looking at firm revenue

Hitting the sweet spot: When MC = MR

Viewing profits and losses

Staying in business and shutting down

Keeping open or shutting down in the short run

Not covering all costs: Shut down in the long run

Chapter 8 Squeezing Out Every Last Drop of Profit

Asking Whether Firms Really Maximize Profits

Talking about efficiency, in the long and short run

Productive efficiency: Producing for the lowest possible cost

Allocative efficiency: Can you make one party better off without making another worse off?

Checking the long and the short run

Going Large! The Goal of Profit Maximization

Understanding a production function

Meeting the isoprofit curve

Looking at profit maximization using isoprofit curves

Maximizing profit in the long run

Slimming Down: Minimizing Costs

Chapter 9 Supplying the Demanded Information on Supply and Demand

Producing Stuff to Sell: The Supply Curve

Moving from marginal costs to firm supply

Marginal costs

Revenue side

Cost side

Firm supply curve

Adding up the numbers from firm to industry

Giving the People What They Want: The Demand Curve

Going from preferences to demand

Seeing what a demand curve looks like.

The curve shifts when anything other than price changes

Gleaning from supply and demand - Comparative statics

Identifying Where Supply and Demand Meet

Returning to where you started: Equilibrium

Reading off revenue from under the demand curve

Summing the gains to consumer and producer: Welfare

Testing the responsiveness of demand using elasticities

Effect of an own price change

Effect of a cross-price change

Effect of a change in income

Chapter 10 Dreaming of the Consumer's Delight: Perfect Competition

Viewing the "Perfect" in Perfect Competition

Defining perfect competition

Identifying the conditions of perfect competition

Each firm is small relative to the market

Firms and products are substitutable

Each consumer is small relative to the market

Perfect information about products and prices

Easy entry and exit

Putting the Conditions Together for the Perfectly Competitive Marketplace

Seeing the supply side

Digging into the demand side

Returning to equilibrium in perfect competition

Examining Efficiency and Perfect Competition

Understanding that perfect competition is a boundary case

Considering perfect competition in the (imperfect) real world

Part 4 Delving into Markets, Market Failure, and Welfare Economics

Chapter 11 Appreciating the Fundamental Theorems of Welfare Economics

Getting the Welfare Back into Welfare Economics

Meeting two social welfare functions

Understanding Why Partial Equilibrium Isn't Enough

Modeling exchange with an Edgeworth box

Investigating Pareto efficiency

Trading Your Way to Efficiency with Two Fundamental Theorems

Bidding for the general equilibrium

Grasping for efficiency: How markets set prices through tâtonnement

Trading among firms and consumers

The first fundamental theorem: A free market is efficient.

The second fundamental theorem: Any efficient outcome will do

Putting the two theorems together: Equity and efficiency trade-offs

Understanding why markets tend toward one price

Chapter 12 Exploring the Monopoly Game

Entering the World of the Monopoly

Monopoly and competitive markets: The case of the missing supply curve

Thinking like a monopolist: "It's mine . . . all mine! Bwa-ha-ha!"

Looking at a monopoly model

Using quantity over price

Considering profits

Stretching a point: Elastic demand

Counting the Costs of Monopolies

Carrying a deadweight

Worrying about the deadweight loss

Using three degrees of price discrimination

First degree (or perfect) price discrimination

Second-degree price discrimination: Nonlinear pricing

Third-degree price discrimination: The student discount

Tweaking the product

Playing with time and space

Tackling Monopolies in the Real World

Appreciating a complex problem

Noting the legal response

Understanding When a Natural Monopoly Is Efficient

Chapter 13 Stepping into the Real World: Oligopoly and Imperfect Competition

Outlining the Features of an Oligopoly

Discussing Three Different Approaches to Oligopoly

Investigating how firms interact in a duopoly

Competing by setting quantity: The Cournot model

Spelling out customer demand

Finding the optimum production for Firm 1

Non-FW stuff twice-as-steep term

Plotting best response curves for the two firms

Seeing why the equilibrium isn't as good as a competitive market

Seeing why the equilibrium isn't as bad as a monopoly

Following the leader: The Stackelberg model

Competing over prices: The Bertrand model

Comparing the output levels and price for the three types of oligopolies

Making Your Firm Distinctive from the Competition.

Reducing the effects of direct competition.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-394-41223-1

9781394412235

OCLC:

1583177395