(BQ) Part 2 book "Microeconomics" has contents: The costs of production, perfect competition, monopoly, monopolistic competition and oligopoly, the factors of production, international trade, public goods and common resources, taxation and the public budget, political choices,.and other contents. | Part Four Firm Decisions The six chapters in Part 4 will introduce you to the choices and decisions that companies make. Every day, about 120 million Americans get up and go to work in over 6 million different offices, stores, factories, and other businesses. These 6 million firms are diverse in what they do and how they do it, but there are important common Most firms focus on meeting customers’ needs while managing employees and physical resources. While doing that, they’re usually working hard to keep up with the competition. A lot of tough choices have to be made along the way. Imagine being a CEO at a large firm and having to decide which product to invest in, where to locate a new factory, which employees to hire, or whether to cut prices after the competition drops theirs. The next chapters explain how firms—big and small—make these kinds of choices. We begin in Chapter 12 with a simple look at revenues and costs. Understanding the form that costs take can give insight into the choices the firm faces. The types of costs a business has to pay drive its decisions about how much to produce to maximize profits and when to stay in business or shut down. Firms also have to know about the competition they face in the market. Some markets are a fierce battleground, with many companies trying to sell the exact same thing. Other markets have only a few companies. Other markets are dominated by one firm that faces no competition at all. Chapters 13, 14, and 15 describe the features of these different kinds of markets, and how firms behave in each. Regardless of what they are selling, businesses need to pay for inputs like raw materials, equipment, and workers to produce goods or services. These are called the factors of production and are the focus of Chapter 16. Thinking about the markets for factors of production can explain why some professions earn more than others, as well as how businesses make decisions about how much to produce and what inputs to .
