welcome to this lecture on microeconomics
my name is doctor vimal kumar and i am an
associate professor of economics at iit kanpur
we are going to study what is microeconomics
in this introductory video i will talk about
three basic issues first what is microeconomics
second why study microeconomics and third
how are we going to study microeconomics ok
so to understand what microeconomics is we
should know what economics is and in hindi
economics is known as [FL] or [FL] earth meaning
material well being so economics as the name
indicates very apt name in hindi that it is
a study of material well being now when we
talk about material well being the issue is
that we all face scarce resources in our life
what do we mean by scarce resources that limited
amount of resources not just you and me but
even if you think of bill gates who happens
to be the richest person he also faces a scarcity
maybe not a scarcity of money but a scarcity
of time
so everyone all human beings face scarcity
an economics is important because we all have
this scarcity of resources so in this course
we are going to talk about how to allocate
this scarce resources now economics has two
major branch which is one microeconomics another
is macro economics micro means at individual
level that we study economics and in macro
we study at aggregate level
but you should understand you must have done
botany or geology at your class eighth ninth
tenth level that in botany if i remember correctly
when i was a student we started with a mustard
plant ok so must through the mustered plant
we learned about the plant world through a
frog dissecting a frog we learned about the
animal world its somewhat the approach is
similar but more fundamental in economics
we study economics whether its macro economics
or micro economics through the lens of microeconomics
so it is the most fundamental for economics
ok ah i should also clarify that some of the
important topic which comes to mind whenever
we talk about economics such as economic growth
inflation unemployment all these things we
will not study in microeconomics because these
are aggregate phenomena and they are topics
in macroeconomics
so let me give you a very basic example that
another way to talk about economics is that
economics is nothing but smart common sense
plus and let me clarify what i mean let us
say you were unexpectedly given a free ticket
to sonu nigam concert that is going to happen
day after tomorrow let us say the market price
of this ticket happens to be seventy five
hundred but let us say if you dont want to
go you can sell it for at most five thousand
rupees
now in the evening let us say you have already
the sonu nigam ticket or in the evening you
heard that at the same time shreya ghoshal
is going to perform and ticket for her so
is still available for seventy five hundred
rupees if you had known this you would have
bought shreya ghoshals concert ticket and
not the sonu nigams ticket what should you
do and this has now if you want to of course
you should go which you should go for the
one which gives you the maximum pleasure also
taking into account the cost this is what
we do in economics at you know basic you dont
need to solve such problem you dont need any
deep theoretical science but as you progress
you would realize that problems become much
more complex and it helps when you have theoretical
foundation to understand all these things
so welcome we are going to talk about choices
we are going to talk about consumers we are
going to talk about producers we will talk
about what do we mean by competition what
is monopoly and so on and so forth i hope
you will join this course and enjoy this thirty
hour lecture on mooc on microeconomics
thank you
