Select a Program:

•   Economics Today Computer-Assisted Instruction:
  Download everything you need to use with the "Computer-Assisted Instruction" section of your textbook! This DOS program shows you don't have to be glitzy to get your point across.
• Economics Tutor:
  This software program enables you to learn economics while playing with twelve simulation games.
• MicroView:
  Work with interactive graphs in this quick review of microeconomics topics.
• Macro Simulation:
  Try your hand at simulating the U.S. economy!

Introduction, Microeconomics by Perloff

• Microeconomics: the study of the allocation of scarce resources.
• Scarcity: the situation that arises when people want more than they can get with their limited resources.
• Trade-offs: measure how much of one thing must be given up to get more of another thing.
• Market: an exchange mechanism that allows buyers to trade with sellers.
• Prices: measure the trade-offs available in the market place and coordinate the independent decisions of consumers and producers.
• Model: a description of the relationship between two or more economic variables.
• Theory: the development and use of a model to test hypotheses, which are predictions about cause and effect.
• Economists assume that individuals exhibit maximizing behavior -- that they allocate their scarce resources so as to make themselves as well off as possible.
• Positive statement: a testable hypothesis about cause and effect.
• Normative statement: a value judgment.

1. Evaluate whether even affluent people face the problem of scarcity.
2. Understand why economics considers individuals' "wants," but not their "needs".
3. Explain why the scarcity problem induces people to consider opportunity costs.
4. Discuss why obtaining increasing increments of any particular good typically entails giving up more and more units of other goods.
5. Explain why society faces a trade-off between consumption goods and capital goods.
6. Distinguish between absolute and comparative advantage.

1. Discuss the difference between macroeconomics and microeconomics.
2. Evaluate the role that rational self-interest plays in economic analysis.
3. Explain why economics is a science.
4. Distinguish between positive and normative economics.