Microeconomics is a branch of economics that studies the behavior of individuals and firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources and the interactions among these individuals and firms. Microeconomics focuses on the study of individual markets, sectors, or industries as opposed to the economy as a whole, which is studied in macroeconomics.
Neoclassical economics is an approach to economics in which the production, consumption, and valuation (pricing) of goods and services are observed as driven by the supply and demand model. According to this line of thought, the value of a good or service is determined through a hypothetical maximization of utility by income-constrained individuals and of profits by firms facing production costs and employing available information and factors of production. This approach has often been justified by appealing to rational choice theory.
In economics, industrial organization is a field that builds on the theory of the firm by examining the structure of firms and markets. Industrial organization adds real-world complications to the perfectly competitive model, complications such as transaction costs, limited information, and barriers to entry of new firms that may be associated with imperfect competition. It analyzes determinants of firm and market organization and behavior on a continuum between competition and monopoly, including from government actions.
A textbook is a book containing a comprehensive compilation of content in a branch of study with the intention of explaining it. Textbooks are produced to meet the needs of educators, usually at educational institutions. Schoolbooks are textbooks and other books used in schools. Today, many textbooks are published in both print and digital formats.
Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials intentionally created and licensed to be free for the end user to own, share, and in most cases, modify. The term "OER" describes publicly accessible materials and resources for any user to use, re-mix, improve, and redistribute under some licenses. These are designed to reduce accessibility barriers by implementing best practices in teaching and to be adapted for local unique contexts.
Randolph Preston McAfee is an American economist and distinguished scientist at Google. Previously, he served as chief economist at Microsoft. He has also served as an economist at Google, vice president and research fellow at Yahoo! Research, where he led the Microeconomics and Social Systems group, and was the J. Stanley Johnson Professor of Business, Economics, and Management at the California Institute of Technology, where he was the executive officer for the social sciences. He has taught business strategy, managerial economics, and introductory microeconomics.
A Bachelor of Economics is an academic degree awarded to students who have completed undergraduate studies in economics. Specialized economics degrees are also offered as a "tagged" BA (Econ), BS (Econ) / BSc (Econ), BCom (Econ), and BSocSc (Econ), or variants such as the "Bachelor of Economic Science".
OpenStax CNX, formerly called Connexions, is a global repository of educational content provided by volunteers. The open source platform is provided and maintained by OpenStax, which is based at Rice University. The collection is available free of charge, can be remixed and edited, and is available for download in various digital formats.
Open education is an educational movement founded on openness, with connections to other educational movements such as critical pedagogy, and with an educational stance which favours widening participation and inclusiveness in society. Open education broadens access to the learning and training traditionally offered through formal education systems and is typically offered through online and distance education. The qualifier "open" refers to the elimination of barriers that can preclude both opportunities and recognition for participation in institution-based learning. One aspect of openness or "opening up" education is the development and adoption of open educational resources in support of open educational practices.
Free content, libre content, libre information, or free information is any kind of creative work, such as a work of art, a book, a software program, or any other creative content unrestricted by copyright and other legal limitations on use. These are works or expressions which can be freely studied, applied, copied and modified by anyone for any purpose including, in some cases, commercial purposes. Free content encompasses all works in the public domain and also those copyrighted works whose licenses honor and uphold the definition of free cultural work.
An open textbook is a textbook licensed under an open license, and made available online to be freely used by students, teachers and members of the public. Many open textbooks are distributed in either print, e-book, or audio formats that may be downloaded or purchased at little or no cost.
FlatWorld is a publisher of college-level textbooks and educational supplements for a worldwide audience founded in 2007 as Flat World Knowledge by Eric Frank and Jeff Shelstad. It was acquired at the end of 2016 by Alastair Adam and John Eielson and its company headquarters was moved from Washington, DC, to Boston, Massachusetts. Following this acquisition, the company rebranded as FlatWorld.
Andreu Mas-Colell is an economist, an expert in microeconomics and a prominent mathematical economist. He is the founder of the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics and a professor in the department of economics at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. He has also served several times in the cabinet of the Catalan government. Summarizing his and others' research in general equilibrium theory, his monograph gave a thorough exposition of research using differential topology. His textbook Microeconomic Theory, co-authored with Michael Whinston and Jerry Green, is the most used graduate microeconomics textbook in the world.
Lyryx Learning (Lyryx) is an educational software company offering open educational resources (OERs) paired with online homework & exams for undergraduate introductory courses in Mathematics & Statistics and Business & Economics.
Founded in 1922, Western Economic Association International (WEAI) is a non-profit academic society dedicated to the encouragement and dissemination of economic research and analysis. WEAI's principal activities include the publishing of two quarterly journals, and the staging of conferences.
Open Course Library (OCL) is an effort by the State of Washington to identify and make available digitally, to community and technical college instructors and students across that state, free textbooks, interactive assignments, and videos. Instructional materials can be "a smorgasbord of teaching modules and exercises developed by other open-learning projects.. . Interactive-learning Web sites and even instructional videos on YouTube. . ." However, OCL is not an OER publishing project, although it did contribute to the development of some widely used resources. Goals include: lowering textbook costs for students, providing new resources for faculty to use in their courses; and fully engaging in the global OER or open educational resources discussion.
The study of Engineering Economics in Civil Engineering, also known generally as engineering economics, or alternatively engineering economy, is a subset of economics, more specifically, microeconomics. It is defined as a "guide for the economic selection among technically feasible alternatives for the purpose of a rational allocation of scarce resources." Its goal is to guide entities, private or public, that are confronted with the fundamental problem of economics.
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration. A main principle of open source software development is peer production, with products such as source code, blueprints, and documentation freely available to the public. The open source movement in software began as a response to the limitations of proprietary code. The model is used for projects such as in open source appropriate technology, and open source drug discovery.
The Theory of Price is a book written by George Stigler. The book was first published in 1946, as a revision and expansion of The Theory of Competitive Price (1942), and has since been revised and reprinted several times. The book covers a range of topics related to microeconomics. Stigler's book was an advanced economics textbook originally intended for graduate students. Over time, it evolved and became The Theory of Price, expanding its scope and becoming a standard text at the undergraduate level. Stigler's work transitioned from the influence of Alfred Marshall and the inter-war School of economics to the post-WWII Chicago School, showing a shift towards greater analytical rigor and the use of mathematics. Throughout its editions, Stigler emphasized precision and positive theory.
