EconixaECONOMICS FUNDAMENTALS

College ~45 hours

College Microeconomics: From Principles to Theory

Built to mirror a first-semester college microeconomics course, this path moves from the logic of choice to the mathematics of markets. Early steps build intuition with graphs; later steps add the optimization reasoning behind consumer and producer decisions. You will compare every market structure on the same terms — who sets the price, what profit looks like, and who gains or loses — and finish by applying the toolkit to real policy questions. Work the practice sets after each step rather than saving them for the end.

Steps

  1. Step 1: Foundations: Scarcity and Models

    The economic way of thinking: trade-offs, incentives, and how economists build simplified models of complex choices.

  2. Step 2: Consumer Choice

    Preferences, budget constraints, and utility maximization — the theory behind the demand curve.

  3. Step 3: Demand, Supply, and Equilibrium

    From individual choice to market outcomes: deriving demand and supply and finding equilibrium.

  4. Step 4: Elasticity and Its Applications

    Measuring responsiveness along demand and supply, and using elasticity to analyze taxes and pricing.

  5. Step 5: Production and Costs

    The firm's technology, short-run and long-run cost curves, and the logic of cost minimization.

  6. Step 6: Perfect Competition

    Price-taking behavior, the shutdown and exit decisions, and why competitive markets are efficient.

  7. Step 7: Monopoly

    Barriers to entry, profit maximization for a price setter, price discrimination, and deadweight loss.

  8. Step 8: Oligopoly and Game Theory

    Strategic interaction: Nash equilibrium, collusion, and why a few large firms behave the way they do.

  9. Step 9: Factor Markets

    Derived demand for labor and capital, wage determination, and the distribution of income.

  10. Step 10: Market Failure and Welfare

    Externalities, public goods, and information problems — measuring the welfare losses and the remedies.

  11. Step 11: Capstone: Economics in Action

    Apply the toolkit to inequality, behavioral puzzles, and policy debates — and test yourself across the whole course.