
Ask HN: What's a practical way to learn microeconomis? - NuDinNou
What I mean by &quot;a practical way&quot;: a good balance between how much time I have to dedicate for learning and how much I learn.
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thr0waway1239
I only found one book that I could actually get through, but it is written by
a controversial guy who many people consider an out-of-touch war hawk.

[https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-
Sowell/dp/0465...](https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-
Sowell/dp/0465060730/)

But the book itself was written before he became controversial, is VERY
readable and approachable, and I would particularly recommend it if you have
already tried to learn economics before and stopped because you could not
stand the sheer tedium.

Also, the other commenters are right about how the stuff you read in
microeconomics simply wouldn't scale to macro (so don't expect it to help you
invest and stuff).

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Mahj0ng
I would argue that the answer depends on your reasons for learning. If you
want to study microeconomics for the sake of 'knowing'/studying microeconomics
in the academic sense, take one the standard textbooks (i.e. Intermediate
Microeconomics by Hal Varian) and work it from cover to cover. Afterwards,
dive into the topics that you found most interesting. Also, a fairly strong
background in calculus helps with the more advanced concepts.

If you are interested in microeconomics for the sake of understanding
something more about the (economic) world, ignore the math/simplistic models
at first and try to grasp the theoretical concepts and, more importantly, the
ideological/epistemological concepts behind microeconomics as a sub-
discipline. Understanding the assumptions behind microeconomics (i.e. the idea
of a fully rational human being) will probably give you something to think
about.

Besides the sources already mentioned (especially Khan Academy), I can
recommend Jodi Beggs
([http://www.economistsdoitwithmodels.com](http://www.economistsdoitwithmodels.com))
video series.

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zhte415
Just read. One book that has stayed constantly on my bookcase, in my suitcase,
under my bed, [alternate preposition location + noun location] is Blaug,
Economic Theory in Retrospect.

It is quite fantastic.

~~~
dorfuss
Blaug is a history of economic though and is far from "practical way".
Moreover what concerns me is that Blaug wrote the book way before I was born
i.e. over 30 years ago[1]. There are things we simply know better today, a lot
of things happened even since 1997 when the book was published in a new
edition, there is a lot of new data concerning the recent crisis and measures
applied by governments to mitigate the problem.

But nevertheless a great read!

[1] - no startups, no long-tail, no hi-tech hype, no big data, no
Zuckerberg... the list is long...

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carlosgg
I don't know how good it is but MITx has an upcoming course:

[https://www.edx.org/course/microeconomics-
mitx-14-100x](https://www.edx.org/course/microeconomics-mitx-14-100x)

and UIUC has another that just started and is supposed to be really good:

[https://www.edx.org/course/microeconomics-
mitx-14-100x](https://www.edx.org/course/microeconomics-mitx-14-100x)

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atmosx
Is that _microeconomics_ ? If the answer is _yes_ , can I ask why are you
interested? It's a set of broken theorems based on a extremely simplistic
perception of reality.

~~~
Nicholas_C
All models are wrong, some are useful.

------
taprun
Whatever you read, you should keep a healthy dose of skepticism. Many economic
theories are great as mathematical models, but humans don't always act as you
might expect.

------
mbrock
Sal Khan is a former finance guy and the economics lectures on KhanAcademy are
pretty good, definitely worth checking out.

------
dorfuss
I'm not sure what you mean by "practical way", but for starters I'd recommend
Harvard professor N. Gregory Mankiw's "Principles of Microeconomics" which is
a standard university textbook translated to many languages (I am not
associated with the book in any way). It's very accessable, colourful, well
explained. He's also authored "Macroeconomics" if you're interested.

Back to learning the "practical way" \- I would recommend reading the Mankiw
book fast and then just start looking around your world and asking questions
as if you were an economist.

I'll tell you how I did it.

My practical training in economics happened when I worked in a bottling plant
at a conveyor belt. Dull phisical work, but leaves you with plenty of time to
think. We were able to fill about 10000 bottles a day. Whenever a bottle broke
on the belt or someone was late for work we had to stop the machinery. Every
minute when we did not work calculated to specific loss expressed in concrete
money. We were paid by hours, if we had to stay longer at work the company
made less money (because they had to pay us more).

The bottles were bought in Italy and travelled about 2000 kilometers to our
plant. The product was made in North America and was imported by bulk to the
plant in huge 1-ton plastic containers. While the final product costs about
5-7 euros in Germany or Austria, the cost of the liquid itself was just a tiny
fraction of the final price. Even the bottles (including transport) were more
expensive than the product itself.

Now start asking questions:

\- Why it pays off to have a world wide operation from a country with very
high labour cost, import the materials coming from thousands of kilometers
away and then sell it with profit to countries such as South Africa and
Argentina? If you were to invest in a new machine that would make my job at a
conveyor belt redundant, how much it would have to cost to make the investment
profitable? Would it enable the company to lower the final cost (more
efficiency, less interruptions, more reliable than a human)? Would the quality
increase? Would your investment enable you to invest even more in expanding to
new markets? And if you kept me at the company, what other useful work could I
perform?

If you were to build your own bottling plant like this one, how much would you
have to invest? Who would buy your product? What would be your price? What
would be the additional cost for you if you wanted to increase the production
by 10% (i.e. what are your margin costs). What can you do with your staff and
machines when you are using only a fraction of your production potential, i.e.
what else could you produce and sell with profit based on your fixed costs?

Who buys a luxury product like that, how is it affected buy the seasons
(holidays? vacations?)? In time of economic crisis would people still buy your
luxury product or would they wait for better times? How to optimise you supply
chain? Should you invest in storehouses so that your product is not waiting at
the plant but rather closer to the clients (supermarket chains)?

Questions like this, when you have to make choices and predict the output are
the essence of "applied" microeconomics. These questions go on and on and I
believe that answering them is what you mean by "learning economics the
practical way". Look around you and keep wondering.

===

p.s. in search for good questions to ask and training your economic thinking
have a look at the famous S. Levitt's "Freakonomics".

===

p.s.2: I am not sure how to learn economics as an academical discipline the
practical way. You would have to learn the modern models and assumptions from
books and test them against the specific detailed data (tax office data would
be nice or a supermarket sales stats), but those are very difficult to obtain
if you are an outsider. Adam Smith was a very good observer, but nevertheless
he was a moral philosopher rather than a big data analyst. But you can still
test certain assertions asking yourself questions like: I pay 2 euros for a
loaf of bread and I go to the same supermarket every day. How much would have
the price of the bread to increase so that you would stop buying bread or
change the store?

