Economists use a particular framework to interpret observed reality. This framework has been called the economic way of thinking, the economic approach, and the method of economics.

This book is different from the many other books that attempt to teach microeconomics in three ways:

• It explicitly applies the recipe of the economic approach in every example.

• It uses concrete examples via Microsoft Excel in every application, which enables the reader to manipulate live graphs and learn numerical methods of optimization.

• It is written in a terse, word-minimizing fashion. The majority of the content is in the Excel workbooks that accompany the book.

You learn by doing, so let's begin.

The Tech Support Example

Suppose that you manage a tech support service for a major software company.

You have two types of callers:

• Regular customers

• Preferred customers

Preferred customers have paid extra money for faster access, which means they expect to spend less time waiting on hold. There are equal numbers of the two types of customers and they call with equal frequency.

Management has given you a fixed number of worker hours per day to answer calls from users needing help.

Daily, you have 10 workers, each working 8-hour shifts, and 5 part-time workers (4-hour shifts). Thus, you have 100 hours per day to support customers calling for help. These hours comprise your Total Resources.