“Economics is a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life.” So wrote Alfred Marshall, one of the most famous economists of nineteenth-century, in his textbook, Principles of Economics. And this definition of economics, as a social science, is as true today as it was in 1890. The field of economics is divided into two broad subfields: microeconomics and macroeconomics. As we will further analyze the first one, it is worth to mention that microeconomics is the study of how households and firms make decisions and how they interact in specific markets.
The main objective of this book is to help students improve their understanding of how a market works. How are prices and wages determined and why are they continually changing? Who determines what will be produced and how much?
The first edition of “Microeconomics. Applications” contains fourteen chapters and represents a useful tool (among others, of course) for students to check their comprehension of what they have just learned. Inside each chapter, students will find out a variety of problems and applications that ask them to apply the concepts taught in the classroom.
I strongly believe that students learn best by working problems. This is the reason why I have provided in Part I a large number of applications, at every level of difficulty.
The second section of this book offers the correct answer for everyone. And because some applications are more difficult than others, in the last section of this book, I have included the method of solving them.
The autor