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[1] [2] [3] Microeconomics focuses on the study of individual markets, sectors, or industries as opposed to the economy as a whole, which is studied in macroeconomics. One goal of microeconomics is to analyze the market mechanisms that establish relative prices among goods and services and allocate limited resources among alternative uses. [4]
In economics, elasticity measures the responsiveness of one economic variable to a change in another. [1] For example, if the price elasticity of the demand of a good is −2, then a 10% increase in price will cause the quantity demanded to fall by 20%.
A good with an elasticity of −2 has elastic demand because quantity demanded falls twice as much as the price increase; an elasticity of −0.5 has inelastic demand because the change in quantity demanded change is half of the price increase. [2] At an elasticity of 0 consumption would not change at all, in spite of any price increases.
If the elasticity of demand is greater than 1, it is a luxury good or a superior good. A zero income elasticity of demand means that an increase in income does not change the quantity demanded of the good. Income elasticity of demand can be used as an indicator of future consumption patterns and as a guide to firms' investment decisions.
The cross elasticity of demand is an economic concept that measures the relative change in demand of a good when another good varies in price. The formula to solve for the coefficient of cross elasticity of demand is calculated by dividing the percentage change in quantity demanded of good A by the percentage change in price of good B.
In microeconomics, substitute goods are two goods that can be used for the same purpose by consumers. [1] That is, a consumer perceives both goods as similar or comparable, so that having more of one good causes the consumer to desire less of the other good.
The theory of consumer choice is the branch of microeconomics that relates preferences to consumption expenditures and to consumer demand curves.It analyzes how consumers maximize the desirability of their consumption (as measured by their preferences subject to limitations on their expenditures), by maximizing utility subject to a consumer budget constraint. [1]
Under the standard assumption of neoclassical economics that goods and services are continuously divisible, the marginal rates of substitution will be the same regardless of the direction of exchange, and will correspond to the slope of an indifference curve (more precisely, to the slope multiplied by −1) passing through the consumption bundle in question, at that point: mathematically, it ...