Provides the fundamentals of microeconomics. It introduces the roles of the market price system in managing the use of society’s resources and in rationing available supplies. The efficiency of resource management is examined in the light of a variety of more or less competitive market environments. Topics include consumer behavior, consumer and market demand, concepts of elasticity, cost, production and factor pricing in perfect and imperfect competition, monopoly, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, regulation and economic policy, economic efficiency and productivity, social costs and benefits, and public goods and externalities.