Principles of Microeconomics for AP® Courses (2017 Update)

561 Pages·2015·10.57 MB·English

by  Steven A. Greenlaw

Principles of Microeconomics
for AP® Courses

SENIOR CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS
STEVEN A. GREENLAW, UNIVERSITY OF MARY WASHINGTON
TIMOTHY TAYLOR, MACALESTER COLLEGE
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Table of Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter1: Welcome to Economics! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.1 What Is Economics, and Why Is It Important? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.2 Microeconomics and Macroeconomics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.3 How Economists Use Theories and Models to Understand Economic Issues . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.4 How Economies Can Be Organized: An Overview of Economic Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Chapter2: Choice in a World of Scarcity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.1 How Individuals Make Choices Based on Their Budget Constraint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.2 The Production Possibilities Frontier and Social Choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.3 Confronting Objections to the Economic Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Chapter3: Demand and Supply . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.1 Demand, Supply, and Equilibrium in Markets for Goods and Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.2 Shifts in Demand and Supply for Goods and Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.3 Changes in Equilibrium Price and Quantity: The Four-Step Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.4 Price Ceilings and Price Floors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.5 Demand, Supply and Efficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Chapter4: Labor and Financial Markets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4.1 Demand and Supply at Work in Labor Markets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.2 Demand and Supply in Financial Markets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
4.3 The Market System as an Efficient Mechanism for Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Chapter5: Elasticity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
5.1 Price Elasticity of Demand and Price Elasticity of Supply . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
5.2 Polar Cases of Elasticity and Constant Elasticity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
5.3 Elasticity and Pricing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
5.4 Elasticity in Areas Other Than Price . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Chapter6: Consumer Choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
6.1 Consumption Choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
6.2 How Changes in Income and Prices Affect Consumption Choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
6.3 Labor-Leisure Choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
6.4 Intertemporal Choices in Financial Capital Markets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Chapter7: Cost and Industry Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
7.1 Explicit and Implicit Costs, and Accounting and Economic Profit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
7.2 The Structure of Costs in the Short Run . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
7.3 The Structure of Costs in the Long Run . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Chapter8: Perfect Competition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
8.1 Perfect Competition and Why It Matters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
8.2 How Perfectly Competitive Firms Make Output Decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
8.3 Entry and Exit Decisions in the Long Run . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
8.4 Efficiency in Perfectly Competitive Markets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Chapter9: Monopoly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
9.1 How Monopolies Form: Barriers to Entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
9.2 How a Profit-Maximizing Monopoly Chooses Output and Price . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Chapter10: Monopolistic Competition and Oligopoly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
10.1 Monopolistic Competition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
10.2 Oligopoly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
Chapter11: Monopoly and Antitrust Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
11.1 Corporate Mergers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
11.2 Regulating Anticompetitive Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
11.3 Regulating Natural Monopolies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
11.4 The Great Deregulation Experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Chapter12: Environmental Protection and Negative Externalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
12.1 The Economics of Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
12.2 Command-and-Control Regulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
12.3 Market-Oriented Environmental Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
12.4 The Benefits and Costs of U.S. Environmental Laws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
12.5 International Environmental Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
12.6 The Tradeoff between Economic Output and Environmental Protection . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Chapter13: Positive Externalitites and Public Goods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
13.1 Why the Private Sector Under Invests in Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
13.2 How Governments Can Encourage Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
13.3 Public Goods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Chapter14: Poverty and Economic Inequality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
14.1 Drawing the Poverty Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
14.2 The Poverty Trap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
14.3 The Safety Net . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
14.4 Income Inequality: Measurement and Causes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
14.5 Government Policies to Reduce Income Inequality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
Chapter15: Issues in Labor Markets: Unions, Discrimination, Immigration . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
15.1 Unions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
15.2 Employment Discrimination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
15.3 Immigration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
Chapter16: Information, Risk, and Insurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
16.1 The Problem of Imperfect Information and Asymmetric Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
16.2 Insurance and Imperfect Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
Chapter17: Financial Markets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
17.1 How Businesses Raise Financial Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
17.2 How Households Supply Financial Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
17.3 How to Accumulate Personal Wealth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
Chapter18: Public Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
18.1 Voter Participation and Costs of Elections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
18.2 Special Interest Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
18.3 Flaws in the Democratic System of Government . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
Chapter19: International Trade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
19.1 Absolute and Comparative Advantage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
19.2 What Happens When a Country Has an Absolute Advantage in All Goods . . . . . . . . . 424
19.3 Intra-industry Trade between Similar Economies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
19.4 The Benefits of Reducing Barriers to International Trade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
Chapter20: Globalization and Protectionism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
20.1 Protectionism: An Indirect Subsidy from Consumers to Producers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
20.2 International Trade and Its Effects on Jobs, Wages, and Working Conditions . . . . . . . . 447
20.3 Arguments in Support of Restricting Imports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
20.4 How Trade Policy Is Enacted: Globally, Regionally, and Nationally . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
20.5 The Tradeoffs of Trade Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460
Appendix A:The Use of Mathematics in Principles of Economics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
Appendix B:Indifference Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
Appendix C:Present Discounted Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549
This OpenStax book is available for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11858/1.4
Preface 1
PREFACE
WelcometoPrinciplesofMicroeconomicsforAP®Courses,anOpenStaxresource.Thistextbookhasbeencreated
with several goals in mind: accessibility, customization, and student engagement—all while encouraging students
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foundation in microeconomics in an accessible format.
About OpenStax
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About OpenStax’s Resources
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Principles of Microeconomics for AP® Courses can be easily customized using our online platform (http://cnx.org/
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of your course. This customization feature will ensure that your textbook truly reflects the goals of your course.
Curation
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About Principles of Microeconomics for AP Courses
Principles of Microeconomics for AP® Courses has been developed to meet the scope and sequence of most
introductorymicroeconomicscourses.Atthesametime,thebookincludesanumberofinnovativefeaturesdesigned
to enhance student learning. Instructors can also customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in
their classroom.
Coverage and Scope
TodevelopPrinciplesofMicroeconomicsforAP®Courses,weacquiredtherightstoTimothyTaylor’ssecondedition
of Principles of Economics and solicited ideas from economics instructors at all levels of higher education, from
2 Preface
communitycollegestoPh.D.-grantinguniversities.Theytoldusabouttheircourses,students,challenges,resources,
and how a textbook can best meet the needs of both instructors and students.
Theresultisabookthatcoversthebreadthofeconomicstopicsandalsoprovidesthenecessarydepthtoensurethe
course is manageable for instructors and students alike. And to make it more applied, we have incorporated many
current topics. We hope students will be interested to know just how far-reaching the recent recession was (and
still is), for example, and why there is so much controversy even among economists over the Affordable Care Act
(Obamacare). The Keystone Pipeline, Occupy Wall Street, and minimum wage debates are just a few of the other
important topics covered.
The pedagogical choices, chapter arrangements, and learning objective fulfillment were developed and vetted with
feedbackfromeducatorsdedicatedtotheproject.Theythoroughlyreadthematerialandofferedcriticalanddetailed
commentary. The outcome is a balanced approach to microeconomics, particularly to the theory and application of
economicsconcepts.New2015dataareincorporatedfortopicsthatrangefromaverageU.S.householdconsumption
inChapter 2tothetotal value ofall homeequity inChapter 17.Current events aretreated inapolitically-balanced
way as well.
The book is organized into five main parts:
What is Economics? The first two chapters introduce students to the study of economics with a focus on
making choices in a world of scarce resources.
Supply and Demand, Chapters 3 and 4, introduces and explains the first analytical model in economics:
supply, demand, and equilibrium, before showing applications in the markets for labor and finance.
TheFundamentalsofMicroeconomicTheory,Chapters5through10,beginsthemicroeconomicsportion
of the text, presenting the theories of consumer behavior, production and costs, and the different models of
market structure, including some simple game theory.
Microeconomic Policy Issues, Chapters 11 through 18, covers the range of topics in applied micro, framed
aroundtheconceptsofpublicgoodsandpositiveandnegativeexternalities.Studentsexplorecompetitionand
antitrustpolicies,environmentalproblems,poverty,incomeinequality,andotherlabormarketissues.Thetext
also covers information, risk and financial markets, as well as public economy.
International Economics, Chapters 19 and 20, the final part of the text, introduces the international
dimensions of economics, including international trade and protectionism.
Chapter 1 Welcome to Economics!
Chapter 2 Choice in a World of Scarcity
Chapter 3 Demand and Supply
Chapter 4 Labor and Financial Markets
Chapter 5 Elasticity
Chapter 6 Consumer Choices
Chapter 7 Cost and Industry Structure
Chapter 8 Perfect Competition
Chapter 9 Monopoly
Chapter 10 Monopolistic Competition and Oligopoly
Chapter 11 Monopoly and Antitrust Policy
Chapter 12 Environmental Protection and Negative Externalities
Chapter 13 Positive Externalities and Public Goods
Chapter 14 Poverty and Economic Inequality
Chapter 15 Issues in Labor Markets: Unions, Discrimination, Immigration
Chapter 16 Information, Risk, and Insurance
Chapter 17 Financial Markets
Chapter 18 Public Economy
Chapter 19 International Trade
Chapter 20 Globalization and Protectionism
Appendix A The Use of Mathematics in Principles of Economics
Appendix B Indifference Curves
Appendix C Present Discounted Value
This OpenStax book is available for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11858/1.4