Free online coursePrinciples of Microeconomics

Course Description

Microeconomics explains how individuals, firms, and governments make choices when resources are limited. In this free online course, you will build a clear, practical way of thinking about everyday decisions: why prices change, how consumers respond, what firms try to maximize, and how markets coordinate millions of independent actions. Instead of relying on memorized definitions, you will develop intuition for the forces behind supply, demand, incentives, and trade-offs.

You will learn how preferences and utility connect to real choices, and how budget constraints shape what people can buy. From there, the course deepens your understanding of demand by exploring why a price change can alter behavior through both substitution and income effects. You will also see how producers think about technology, output, and efficiency, and how costs influence short-run and long-run decisions. These tools are the foundation for analyzing how businesses set strategy and how households respond to changing economic conditions.

As you progress, the focus shifts from individual decisions to market outcomes. You will examine competitive markets, welfare and efficiency, and the conditions under which markets allocate resources well. You will also analyze market power, learning how monopolies and oligopolies differ from perfect competition, why pricing and output change when firms have control, and what happens when cooperation is difficult. The course then expands into labor and input markets, intertemporal choice and present value, uncertainty, and the role of incentives over time.

Finally, you will connect microeconomic theory to public policy and real-world debates. You will explore international trade and comparative advantage, the balance between efficiency and equity, taxation and who really bears a tax, and why market failures such as externalities and informational asymmetry can justify government intervention. With guided practice through exercises, you will strengthen your ability to reason step by step, interpret economic logic, and apply it to problems in school, work, and everyday life.