Category: Level I Economics

By breakeven analysis we mean a determination of whether or not a firm can earn a positive (or zero) profit given its demand curve and its cost structure.  By shutdown analysis we me a determination of whether or not a firm should continue to operate in the short run and in the long run given…

This will be a short article, mercifully. Accounting profit is the difference between accounting revenue and accounting cost, while economic profit is the difference between economic revenue and economic cost.  (I know: not very exciting.  Hang in there; it gets better.) Accounting revenue and economic revenue are the same: total revenue.  The amount you receive…

Let’s get the terminology out of the way first. “Marginal” means “for the next unit”.  Thus: Marginal Revenue: The increase in revenue (sales) from producing and selling one additional unit of whatever it is you’re producing and selling Marginal Cost: The increase in cost (expenses) from producing and selling one additional unit of whatever it…

This article contains a number of supply and demand graphs.  Before reading it, I encourage you to look at this short article I wrote on these graphs, so that you don’t risk suffering irreparable trauma when you see them. The idea of elasticity is fairly simple, yet it can be baffling to many candidates (primarily…

This is a very short article, but one that you should read before reading any other article that deals with supply and demand. In a nutshell, economists’ supply and demand graphs – price vs. quantity – are weird.  (By “weird” I mean “stupid”.)  For whatever reason, some economist a bazillion years ago decided that these…

The idea of interest rate parity (IRP) is pretty simple.  In a nutshell, it says that if you hold a particular currency – say, GBP – and you want to to make a risk-free investment of that currency, you should earn the risk-free interest rate for that currency for the length of time of your…

Absolute Advantage Absolute advantage is quite easy to understand: if it costs less in country A to make a product than it costs in country B, then country A has an absolute advantage over country B in the production of that product. Easy-peasy. Comparative Advantage Comparative advantage is a bit more complicated.  It depends not…

When I was an undergraduate student in university, I was fortunate enough to have to have written only two term papers.  One was in the capstone business management class I took my last semester, and the other was in a class in mathematical modeling.  The term paper I wrote for the latter class was on…

When the price of a good changes, there are two effects on the demand for that good: The substitution effect, which is a relative effect (i.e., how the demand for that good, by itself, changes relative to the demand for other goods) The income effect, which is an absolute effect (i.e., how the demand for…

In economics, as in physics, an equilibrium is a point at which all opposing forces net to zero: once you’re there, there’s nothing that will drive you away. Do not assume that this means that all equilibria are created equal.  Far from it.  What matters is not what the forces do when you’re at an…