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Microeconomics
Microeconomics is a branch of economics that studies the behavior of individuals and Theory of the firm, firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of scarcity, scarce resources and the interactions among these individuals and firms. Microeconomics focuses on the study of individual markets, sectors, or industries as opposed to the economy as a whole, which is studied in macroeconomics. One goal of microeconomics is to analyze the market mechanisms that establish relative prices among goods and services and allocate limited resources among alternative uses. Microeconomics shows conditions under which free markets lead to desirable allocations. It also analyzes market failure, where markets fail to produce Economic efficiency, efficient results. While microeconomics focuses on firms and individuals, macroeconomics focuses on the total of economic activity, dealing with the issues of Economic growth, growth, inflation, and unemployment—and with national policies relati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Economics
Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of Agent (economics), economic agents and how economy, economies work. Microeconomics analyses what is viewed as basic elements within economy, economies, including individual agents and market (economics), markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyses economies as systems where production, distribution, consumption, savings, and Expenditure, investment expenditure interact; and the factors of production affecting them, such as: Labour (human activity), labour, Capital (economics), capital, Land (economics), land, and Entrepreneurship, enterprise, inflation, economic growth, and public policies that impact gloss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microfoundations
Microfoundations are an effort to understand macroeconomic phenomena in terms of individual agents' economic behavior and interactions.Maarten Janssen (2008),Microfoundations, in ''The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics'', 2nd ed. Research in microfoundations explores the link between Macroeconomics, macroeconomic and Microeconomics, microeconomic principles in order to explore the aggregate relationships in macroeconomic models. During recent decades, macroeconomists have attempted to combine microeconomic models of individual behaviour to derive the relationships between macroeconomic variables. Presently, many macroeconomic models, representing different theories, are Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium, derived by aggregating microeconomic models, allowing economists to test them with both macroeconomic and microeconomic data. However, microfoundations research is still heavily debated with management, strategy and organization scholars having varying views on the "micro-m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Market Failure
In neoclassical economics, market failure is a situation in which the allocation of goods and services by a free market is not Pareto efficient, often leading to a net loss of economic value.Paul Krugman and Robin Wells Krugman, Robin Wells (2006). ''Economics'', New York, Worth Publishers. The first known use of the term by economists was in 1958,Francis M. Bator (1958). "The Anatomy of Market Failure," ''Quarterly Journal of Economics'', 72(3) pp351–379(press +). but the concept has been traced back to the Victorian writers John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick.Steven G. Medema (2007). "The Hesitant Hand: Mill, Sidgwick, and the Evolution of the Theory of Market Failure," ''History of Political Economy'', 39(3)pp. 331��358. 200Online Working Paper. Market failures are often associated with public goods, time-inconsistent preferences, Information asymmetry, information asymmetries, Market structure, failures of competition, principal–agent problems, externalities,Jean-Jacques L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consumer Choice
The theory of consumer choice is the branch of microeconomics that relates preferences to consumption expenditures and to consumer demand curves. It analyzes how consumers maximize the desirability of their consumption (as measured by their preferences subject to limitations on their expenditures), by maximizing utility subject to a consumer budget constraint. Factors influencing consumers' evaluation of the utility of goods include: income level, cultural factors, product information and physio-psychological factors. Consumption is separated from production, logically, because two different economic agents are involved. In the first case, consumption is determined by the individual. Their specific tastes or preferences determine the amount of utility they derive from goods and services they consume. In the second case, a producer has different motives to the consumer in that they are focussed on the profit they make. This is explained further by producer theory. The models ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Macroeconomics
Macroeconomics is a branch of economics that deals with the performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. This includes regional, national, and global economies. Macroeconomists study topics such as output (economics), output/Gross domestic product, GDP (gross domestic product) and national income, unemployment (including Unemployment#Measurement, unemployment rates), price index, price indices and inflation, Consumption (economics), consumption, saving, investment (macroeconomics), investment, Energy economics, energy, international trade, and international finance. Macroeconomics and microeconomics are the two most general fields in economics. The focus of macroeconomics is often on a country (or larger entities like the whole world) and how its markets interact to produce large-scale phenomena that economists refer to as aggregate variables. In microeconomics the focus of analysis is often a single market, such as whether changes in supply or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consumption Set
The theory of consumer choice is the branch of microeconomics that relates preferences to consumption expenditures and to consumer demand curves. It analyzes how consumers maximize the desirability of their consumption (as measured by their preferences subject to limitations on their expenditures), by maximizing utility subject to a consumer budget constraint. Factors influencing consumers' evaluation of the utility of goods include: income level, cultural factors, product information and physio-psychological factors. Consumption is separated from production, logically, because two different economic agents are involved. In the first case, consumption is determined by the individual. Their specific tastes or preferences determine the amount of utility they derive from goods and services they consume. In the second case, a producer has different motives to the consumer in that they are focussed on the profit they make. This is explained further by producer theory. The models tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Preference (economics)
In economics, and in other social sciences, preference refers to an order by which an Agent (economics), agent, while in search of an "optimal choice", ranks alternatives based on their respective utility. ''Preferences'' are evaluations that concern matters of value, in relation to practical reasoning. Individual preferences are determined by taste, need, ..., as opposed to price, availability or personal income. Classical economics assumes that people act in their best (rational) interest. In this context, rationality would dictate that, when given a choice, an individual will select an option that maximizes their self-interest. But preferences are not always transitive relation, transitive, both because real humans are far from always being rational and because in some situations preferences can form cycle (graph theory), cycles, in which case there exists no well-defined optimal choice. An example of this is Efron dice. The concept of preference plays a key role in many discip ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Utility
In economics, utility is a measure of a certain person's satisfaction from a certain state of the world. Over time, the term has been used with at least two meanings. * In a normative context, utility refers to a goal or objective that we wish to maximize, i.e., an objective function. This kind of utility bears a closer resemblance to the original utilitarian concept, developed by moral philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. * In a descriptive context, the term refers to an ''apparent'' objective function; such a function is revealed by a person's behavior, and specifically by their preferences over lotteries, which can be any quantified choice. The relationship between these two kinds of utility functions has been a source of controversy among both economists and ethicists, with most maintaining that the two are distinct but generally related. Utility function Consider a set of alternatives among which a person has a preference ordering. A utility fu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mathematical Economics
Mathematical economics is the application of Mathematics, mathematical methods to represent theories and analyze problems in economics. Often, these Applied mathematics#Economics, applied methods are beyond simple geometry, and may include differential and integral calculus, Recurrence relation, difference and differential equations, Matrix (mathematics), matrix algebra, mathematical programming, or other Computational economics, computational methods.TOC. Proponents of this approach claim that it allows the formulation of theoretical relationships with rigor, generality, and simplicity. Mathematics allows economists to form meaningful, testable propositions about wide-ranging and complex subjects which could less easily be expressed informally. Further, the language of mathematics allows economists to make specific, positiv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taxation
A tax is a mandatory financial charge or levy imposed on an individual or legal person, legal entity by a governmental organization to support government spending and public expenditures collectively or to Pigouvian tax, regulate and reduce negative Externality, externalities. Tax compliance refers to policy actions and individual behavior aimed at ensuring that taxpayers are paying the right amount of tax at the right time and securing the correct tax allowances and tax relief. The first known taxation occurred in Ancient Egypt around 3000–2800 BC. Taxes consist of direct tax, direct or indirect taxes and may be paid in money or as labor equivalent. All countries have a tax system in place to pay for public, common societal, or agreed national needs and for the functions of government. Some countries levy a flat tax, flat percentage rate of taxation on personal annual income, but most progressive tax, scale taxes are progressive based on brackets of yearly income amounts. Most ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Economic Efficiency
In microeconomics, economic efficiency, depending on the context, is usually one of the following two related concepts: * Allocative or Pareto efficiency: any changes made to assist one person would harm another. * Productive efficiency: no additional output of one good can be obtained without decreasing the output of another good, and production proceeds at the lowest possible average total cost. These definitions are not equivalent: a market or other economic system may be allocatively but not productively efficient, or productively but not allocatively efficient. There are also other definitions and measures. All characterizations of economic efficiency are encompassed by the more general engineering concept that a system is efficient or optimal when it maximizes desired outputs (such as utility) given available inputs. Standards of thought There are two main standards of thought on economic efficiency, which respectively emphasize the distortions created by ''governme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Budget Set
In economics, a budget set, or the opportunity set facing a consumer, is the set of all possible consumption bundles that the consumer can afford taking as given the prices of commodities available to the consumer and the consumer's income. Let the number of commodities available to the consumer in an economy be finite and equal to k. Thus, for commodity amounts \mathbf = \left x_, x_, \ldots, x_ \right/math>, also known as consumption plans which should not exceed the income, with associated prices \mathbf = \left p_, p_, \ldots, p_ \right/math> and consumer income m, the budget set is defined as :B_ = \left\, where the consumption set is taken to be X = \mathbb^_. It is typically assumed that \mathbf \gg 0 and m \in \mathbb_, in which case B is also known as the Walrasian, or competitive, budget set. The budget set is bounded above by a k-dimensional budget hyperplane characterized by the equation \mathbf \mathbf = m, which in the two-good case corresponds to the budget line. Gra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
