Microeconomics: An Introduction

Introductory lecture defining economics as the study of how a person uses limited resources to satisfy unlimited wants, then walking the traditional divisions of the subject: consumption as satisfaction of human wants through goods and services, production as their creation using the factors of production, exchange as the transfer of goods for consumption, distribution as the reward of the factors in rent, wages, interest and profit, public finance as the activity of government and local authorities, and economic planning as the coordination of objectives, models and techniques. From there it moves to the micro and macro split, the terms coined by Ragnar Frisch in 1920, the consumer in equilibrium at maximum satisfaction and the producer at maximum profit, and the broad classification of markets where goods and services are exchanged.