Microeconomics For Dummies

Chapter 21

Top Ten Tips to Take Away

In This Chapter

Getting to grips with the main points of microeconomics

Dealing with an imperfect world

Microeconomics is a huge area of study, and no one can do the entire subject justice in one book — all of your authors are proud owners of entire shelves full of microeconomic textbooks. You can, however, take away many of the most important core ideas of microeconomics from this book.

So without more ado, here are ten important points to remember from this book.

Respecting Choice

All microeconomics is built on the idea that consumers and producers make choices about what to make or what to buy. As a result, economists tend to have a healthy respect for choice itself. People value things in different ways, and economists want to look at the consequences of, rather than the reasons for, those values. You only get to know what value people place on something after they choose it — or as economists say, you get to know people’s preferences when they have chosen (they also say that there are as many valuations as people).

Trade is possible because people value things differently. The desire to trade creates the need for a means to trade things ...