Preliminary Lecture Notes for a Micro Course Based on Microeconomics 8ed by Pindyck & Rubinfeld
Preliminary Lecture notes for a Micro Course Based on
Microeconomics 8ed by Pindyck & Rubinfeld
Prepared by Houston H. Stokes.
Goal of the Notes: Allow the student to have an outline of the key ideas and solutions to a number of problems that will be discussed in class. Since the notes are distributed in WORD® format, students can edit the notes.
Introduction
Quote from Robert Mundell Man and Economics 1968
"Economics is the science of choice. It began with Aristotle but got mixed up with ethics in the Middle Ages. Adam Smith separated it from ethics, and Walrus mathematized it. Alfred Marshall tried to narrow it, and Keynes made is fashionable. Robbins widened it, and Samuelson dynamized it, but modern science made it statistical and tried to confine it again.
But the science won't stay put. It keeps cropping up all over the place. There is an economics of money and trade, of production and consumption, of distribution and development. There is also an economics of welfare, manners, language, industry, music, and art. There is an economics of war and an economics of power. There is even an economics of love.
Economics seems to apply to every nook and cranny of human experience. It is an aspect of all conscious action. Whenever decisions are made, the law of economy is called into play. Whenever alternatives exist, life takes on an economic aspect. It has always been so. But how can it be?
It can be because economics is more than just the most developed of the sciences of control. It is a way of looking at things, an ordering principle, a complete part of everything. It is a system of thought, a life game, an element of pure knowledge.
Chapter 1 Preliminaries
• Economics is concerned with scarcity. If something is not scarce, there is no economic problem.
• Microeconomics => Study of behavior of individual economic units. How they react and how they interact to form larger units.
•
Microeconomics 8ed by Pindyck & Rubinfeld
Prepared by Houston H. Stokes.
Goal of the Notes: Allow the student to have an outline of the key ideas and solutions to a number of problems that will be discussed in class. Since the notes are distributed in WORD® format, students can edit the notes.
Introduction
Quote from Robert Mundell Man and Economics 1968
"Economics is the science of choice. It began with Aristotle but got mixed up with ethics in the Middle Ages. Adam Smith separated it from ethics, and Walrus mathematized it. Alfred Marshall tried to narrow it, and Keynes made is fashionable. Robbins widened it, and Samuelson dynamized it, but modern science made it statistical and tried to confine it again.
But the science won't stay put. It keeps cropping up all over the place. There is an economics of money and trade, of production and consumption, of distribution and development. There is also an economics of welfare, manners, language, industry, music, and art. There is an economics of war and an economics of power. There is even an economics of love.
Economics seems to apply to every nook and cranny of human experience. It is an aspect of all conscious action. Whenever decisions are made, the law of economy is called into play. Whenever alternatives exist, life takes on an economic aspect. It has always been so. But how can it be?
It can be because economics is more than just the most developed of the sciences of control. It is a way of looking at things, an ordering principle, a complete part of everything. It is a system of thought, a life game, an element of pure knowledge.
Chapter 1 Preliminaries
• Economics is concerned with scarcity. If something is not scarce, there is no economic problem.
• Microeconomics => Study of behavior of individual economic units. How they react and how they interact to form larger units.
•