Microeconomics Core Concepts: Think Like an Economist
A Deep Dive Into Microeconomics Theories and Applications: Understanding Demand, Supply, and Market Dynamics
Microeconomics Core Concepts: Think Like an Economist free download
A Deep Dive Into Microeconomics Theories and Applications: Understanding Demand, Supply, and Market Dynamics
Welcome to Microeconomics Core Concepts — your complete guide to understanding the core principles of consumer and producer theory. Whether you're tackling an economics degree, preparing for exams, or simply eager to understand how microeconomics explains real-world behavior, this course, with 68 lectures and over 60 downloadable PDF resources accompanying each lecture, breaks down complex concepts into simple, intuitive lessons — no jargon, just clarity.
Ever wondered how consumers make choices when their money is limited
Why demand curves slope downward?
Or how economists quantify happiness, preferences, and efficiency?
If you're curious about the powerful decision-making models that drive markets and shape everyday life, this course is for you. This course walks you through the essential building blocks of consumer and producer theory, beginning with budget constraints and preferences, and progressing through utility, demand, surplus, and firm behavior. You'll learn not just what the models are, but why they matter — with real-world examples and visual explanations that make abstract concepts easy to understand.
Course Content Overview
Chapter 1: Budget Constraint
We begin with the two-goods model, where a consumer chooses between two products given their prices and a fixed income. You'll learn to derive and graph the budget line, and understand how it shifts when income or prices change. This chapter forms the mathematical and graphical foundation for consumer theory.
Chapter 2: Preferences
This chapter introduces how consumers evaluate different combinations of goods. You'll explore preference relations, indifference curves, and marginal rate of substitution (MRS) — key tools for modeling rational consumer behavior.
Chapter 3: Utility
Here we transition from preferences to utility functions, which assign numerical values to bundles. You'll learn the difference between ordinal and cardinal utility, how to compute marginal utility, and how utility helps explain consumer choices in a structured way.
Chapter 4: Choice and Demand
This chapter merges previous concepts to explain how consumers maximize utility subject to their budget constraint. You'll learn how to derive the individual demand curve, analyze income and substitution effects, and understand how optimal choices change when prices or income vary.
Chapter 5: Consumer Surplus and Market Demand
Zooming out from the individual to the market, this chapter explains how to derive the market demand curve by horizontally summing individual demand. You'll also learn how to compute consumer surplus — a critical concept for measuring consumer welfare and evaluating policy changes.
Chapter 6: Technology
Now we shift to the producer side. This chapter introduces production functions, inputs, and outputs. You'll study isoquants, marginal product, and the concept of returns to scale — foundational for understanding firm behavior and production efficiency.
Unlock the power of microeconomic thinking with this in-depth course based on Hal Varian's "Intermediate Microeconomics" — one of the most respected textbooks in the field. Whether you're a student aiming to excel in university-level economics, preparing for exams, or someone curious about how economic decisions are made, this course offers clear, intuitive, and structured guidance through the foundational topics of intermediate microeconomics.
The lectures are provided by renowned econometrics lecturer, Peter Jochumzen from Lund University.
