Ask HN: What's a practical way to learn microeconomis?
What I mean by "a practical way": a good balance between how much time I have to dedicate for learning and how much I learn.
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465...
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).
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) video series.
It is quite fantastic.
But nevertheless a great read!
[1] - no startups, no long-tail, no hi-tech hype, no big data, no Zuckerberg... the list is long...
https://www.edx.org/course/microeconomics-mitx-14-100x
and UIUC has another that just started and is supposed to be really good:
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.
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p.s. in search for good questions to ask and training your economic thinking have a look at the famous S. Levitt's "Freakonomics".
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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?