ECON 1200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Marginal Revenue, Demand Curve, Economic Equilibrium
Document Summary
Sellers have a cost and buyers have a value. If everyone trades at equilibrium price, everyone will get maximum surplus/maximum value. Predicts maximum surplus (value from trade) is extracted by markets. Predicts a price/quantity pair where supply and demand meet. Predicts that highest-value buyers trade with lowest-cost sellers. Managing resources is important bcos they are scarce. When wants are greater than the amount freely available from nature. Society has limited resources = cannot produce all goods and services. The study of how society manages its scarce resources (production, distribution/allocation, and consumption of goods and services) Methods: queuing, market (resource is allocated only when the willingness to pay of the buyer is greater than the price of the good/service, nepotism, lottery, force, hierarchy, voting. Resources are allocated by the combined choices of millions of households and firms. How people make decisions: people face trade-offs. There is no such thing as a free lunch . Use of scarce resources is costly trade-offs.