Mikroekonomikoje

Mikroekonomikoje studies how individuals and firms make decisions and how these decisions interact in markets. It analyzes how scarce resources are allocated through prices that reflect supply and demand. The field focuses on choices of households, firms, and buyers and sellers in specific markets, examining how these choices determine prices, quantities, and welfare in the economy’s smaller components rather than the overall economy.

Core concepts include models of consumer choice, where individuals maximize utility subject to a budget constraint, yielding demand curves. On the production side, firms aim to maximize profit given technology and costs, producing where marginal cost equals price. Market structures range from perfect competition to monopoly and oligopoly, with each structure shaping prices and outputs. The elasticity of demand and supply measures how responsive quantities are to price changes.

Equilibrium analysis tracks how supply and demand balance to set prices, while shifts in income, technology, or policy alter curves and create surplus or shortage. Welfare analysis compares consumer and producer surplus to assess efficiency and the distribution of gains from trade. Microeconomics also studies market failures such as externalities and public goods, and it explores potential government interventions to improve outcomes.

The field informs pricing strategies, resource allocation, and decisions in labor and capital markets, as well as environmental and other policy areas at a micro level. It contrasts with macroeconomics, which examines aggregates like inflation, unemployment, and national output. While powerful, microeconomic models rely on simplifying assumptions and may not capture all real-world complexities.