difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics
Answers
Explanation:
Microeconomics studies individuals and business decisions, while macroeconomics analyzes the decisions made by countries and governments. Microeconomics focuses on supply and demand, and other forces that determine price levels, making it a bottom-up approach.
Answer:
Explanation:
The main differences between micro and macro economics
Small segment of economy vs whole aggregate economy.
Microeconomics works on the principle that markets soon create equilibrium. In macro economics, the economy may be in a state of disequilibrium (boom or recession) for a longer period.
There is little debate about the basic principles of micro-economics. Macro economics is more contentious. There are different schools of macro economics offering different explanations (e.g. Keynesian, Monetarist, Austrian, Real Business cycle e.t.c).
Macro economics places greater emphasis on empirical data and trying to explain it. Micro economics tends to work from theory first.
Differences between microeconomics and macroeconomics
The main difference is that micro looks at small segments and macro looks at the whole economy. But, there are other differences.
Equilibrium – Disequilibrium
Classical economic analysis assumes that markets return to equilibrium (S=D). If demand increases faster than supply, this causes price to rise, and firms respond by increasing supply. For a long time, it was assumed that the macro economy behaved in the same way as micro economic analysis. Before, the 1930s, there wasn’t really a separate branch of economics called macroeconomics.
Great Depression and birth of Macroeconomics
In the 1930s, economies were clearly not in equilibrium. There was high unemployment, output was below capacity, and there was a state of disequilibrium. Classical economics didn’t really have an explanation for this dis-equilibrium, which from a micro perspective, shouldn’t occur.
In 1936, J.M.Keynes produced his The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money; this examined why the depression was lasting so long. It examined why we can be in a state of disequilibrium in the macro economy. Keynes observed that we could have a negative output gap (disequilibrium in the macro-economy) for a prolonged time. In other words, microeconomic principles of markets clearing, didn’t necessarily apply to macro economics. Keynes wasn’t the only economist to investigate this new branch of economics. For example, Irving Fisher examined the role of debt deflation in explaining the great depression. But, Keynes’ theory was the most wide-ranging explanation and played a large role in creating the new branch of macro-economics.
Since 1936, macroeconomics developed as a separate strand within economics. There have been competing explanations for issues such as inflation, recessions and economic growth.