All goods and services are subject to scarcity at some level, which requires that society develop some allocation mechanism to determine who gets what. Over recorded history, these allocation rules were usually command based, meaning that the king or the emperor would decide. In contemporary times, most countries have turned to market-based allocation systems. In markets, prices act as rationing devices, encouraging or discouraging production and encouraging or discouraging consumption to find an equilibrium allocation of resources. To understand this process, businesses construct demand curves to capture consumer behavior and consider supply curves to capture producer behavior. The resulting equilibrium price “rations” the scarce commodity.
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Firm Level Economics: Consumer and Producer Behavior
This course is part of Managerial Economics and Business Analysis Specialization
Instructor: Larry DeBrock
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There are 5 modules in this course
You will become familiar with the course, your classmates, and our learning environment. The orientation will also help you obtain the technical skills required for the course.
What's included
2 videos6 readings1 quiz1 discussion prompt
The fundamental problem of scarcity challenges us to think about an allocation mechanism to determine what is produced and who consumes it. We will discuss scarcity and allocation mechanisms. In this course, we will focus on markets and prices as the solution to this resource allocation problem.
What's included
7 videos2 readings3 quizzes
Markets are frequent targets of governments. This module will introduce government policy intervention into the market. This intervention can be direct control of prices or it could be indirect price pressure through the imposition of taxes or subsidies. Both forms of intervention are impacted by elasticity.
What's included
10 videos2 readings4 quizzes
This module will introduce cost theory. Firms are interested in producing profits, which are the residuals when costs are subtracted from revenue. Earlier modules constructed demand curves. They give us an idea of how many units of product we can sell at different prices; this would be firm revenue. We will work to understand inputs, production, and costs.
What's included
14 videos2 readings3 quizzes
The firm goal of profit maximization requires an understanding of costs and revenues. In this module, we will see how a firm optimally responds to a given market price by finding the profit maximizing output. The level of profits at this maximum profit point will help determine short run equilibrium.
What's included
10 videos5 readings3 quizzes1 peer review1 plugin
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University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Illinois Tech
Rice University
University of Rochester
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This course is part of the following degree program(s) offered by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. If you are admitted and enroll, your completed coursework may count toward your degree learning and your progress can transfer with you.¹
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