📈 Economics — Map of Content

Economics is the study of how individuals, firms, and societies make choices under scarcity. MBA economics applies these principles to business decisions.

Strongest at: Booth (Chicago School) · Wharton · Harvard

🔍 Microeconomics (Firm & Market Level)

Supply and Demand — Market equilibrium and price signals
Price Elasticity — Demand sensitivity to price changes
Market Structures — Perfect competition, monopoly, oligopoly, monopolistic competition
Game Theory — Strategic interaction between rational agents
Cost Curves — Marginal cost, average cost, economies of scale
Consumer Theory — Utility maximization, indifference curves

🌍 Macroeconomics (Economy-Wide)

GDP and Economic Growth — Measuring the economy
Monetary Policy — How central banks control money supply
Fiscal Policy — Government spending and taxation
Inflation and Interest Rates — The Phillips Curve tradeoff
Exchange Rates — PPP, interest rate parity
Business Cycles — Expansion, peak, recession, trough

🧠 Behavioral Economics

Behavioral Economics Overview — Kahneman, Thaler — departures from rationality
Loss Aversion — Losses hurt ~2× more than equal gains feel good
Anchoring Bias — Reliance on first information received
Status Quo Bias — Preference for the current state
Nudge Theory — Choice architecture and defaults

♟️ Game Theory in Business

Prisoner’s Dilemma — Why cooperation fails without commitment
Nash Equilibrium — Stable strategies in games
Auctions and Bidding — Optimal bidding strategies
Signaling Theory — Education as signal (Spence)

🔑 Key Economic Concepts for MBAs

Concept	Business Application
Opportunity Cost	Every decision has a hidden cost
Marginal Analysis	Should we produce one more unit?
Price Discrimination	Charge different prices by segment
Externalities	Market failures, ESG justification
Information Asymmetry	Insurance, hiring, financial markets
Moral Hazard	Too-big-to-fail, insurance problems
Adverse Selection	Lemons problem (Akerlof)

📚 Essential Books

Freakonomics — Levitt & Dubner (applied micro thinking)
Misbehaving — Richard Thaler (behavioral economics)
Thinking, Fast and Slow — Kahneman (behavioral foundations)
The General Theory — Keynes (macro foundation)
Capitalism and Freedom — Milton Friedman (Chicago School)

🏫 School Spotlights

Booth: The “Chicago School” — markets are efficient, prices are signals, free markets
Wharton: MGEC 611/612 — Managerial Economics; rigorous micro application
HBS: BGIE (Business, Government & International Economy) — macro-policy focus

📚 Case Studies

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