Chapter 14

I would give this section a difficulty of 2.5. It's similar to the last chapter and builds on some of the previous concepts we learned, but that's a part of what makes this section difficult for me. As I didn't have as good of an understanding as normal, this chapter will also be hard for me. There are a lot of equations again and different circumstances to remember about how curves relate to each others positions and the slopes of other curves. One part that I was able to relate to a previous chapter was the way firms enter and exit the market. In a way it's like finding the equilibrium quantity and price, but this time with the quantity being firms. I was also interested but confused on the explanation of firms choosing to shut down in the short run or long run, because of the difference in costs versus revenue.

Chapter 13

I would give this chapter a 2.5 for difficulty. This was by far the hardest chapter that I've read to date, as there was a ton of content to cover, as well as a lot of new vocabulary. I did understand the basics however with average vs. marginal cost and how businesses make their decisions based off of statistics like those. There can be a lot of variation from the models they presented us, and simply trying to get all the terms straight in my head is tough. For instance in some models hiring more workers has a decreasing amount of the product produced, while in others the first few workers actually increase efficiency. A business also has to compare their fixed and incidental costs to decided the amount of workers to hire. I remember my dad told me a while ago that it's good to invest in businesses that have a lot of incidental costs rather than fixed because if the market is doing poorly, they can always just scale back on production.

Chapter 11

I would give this chapter a 1.5 for difficulty. I think the only hard part will be making sure that I remember the difference between common resources, public goods, private goods, and natural monopolies. If you know which is which its not to hard to discern which category a certain good or service falls under. As we said in class, goods can shift from public goods to common resources based on how many people use them. If one persons use isn't affecting another than it is a public good, but if they do affect others than it's a common resource. This was another important chapter to showcase the governments importance in an economy. People respond to incentives and if they think that they can get something they want for free without actually paying for it then they are likely to do so. The government is important to minimize free-riding, and create economic efficiency where people would otherwise not pay for it.

Chapter 10

I would give this chapter a difficulty of two. The reason is that while it is a lot of economic theory, it was a lot of economic theory. A lot of the concepts introduced were topics that we had talked about briefly or I had maybe thought a bit about, but not too much.  There wasn't as much overlap as there had been in the previous chapters. This chapter was important because it showed us the limits f the invisible hand. The invisible hand only takes into account the parties that take part in the deal, and not any other party that may be affected but didn't directly partake in the deal. Extranalities and market power are two of the reasons that a government is important to maintain an efficient economy. There are various ways to resolve extranalties as described in the chapter, and some of them don't even require government interference according to the coarse theorem.

Chapter 8

I would give this chapter a one for difficulty. I would say this because the principle of taxation can be similar to what we learned about consumer and producer surplus in the last chapter. Dead weight taxation is also a topic that we were introduced to previously. The only semi new thing that we learned in the chapter was that as taxes increase, total tax revenue can decrease once it's past a certain point. This can be compared to the principles of elasticity, and how if your curve is elastic then you should lower your prices to increase total revenue. I think taxes are a really important concept because for policy makers, knowing where and much to levy a tax can be crucial. There are so many factors to consider but whether we have a large sweeping government, or one that just does the bare minimum to protect property rights, taxes are necessary.

Chapter 7

I would definitely give this chapter a 1 for difficulty. While there was a tiny bit of math involved its very simple to look at a graph and see what the producer and consumer surplus is. From a theoretical standpoint as well it also made sense to me. This chapter built on what Mr. Waller was saying about how only the transactions to the left of equilibrium work out. Before I was wondering if people who were willing to buy at higher prices or sell at lower prices actually ended up completing transactions with those values but I now know that that is not the case. All transactions in a perfectly competitive market take place at the equilibrium price. Anyone who was willing to buy for more or sell for less simply ends up benefiting from the equilibrium price. This chapter also showed me some of the potential trade-offs between equity and equality.