ECON 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Budget Constraint, Indifference Curve

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ECON 1: Chapter 21 Notes
Focus Questions:
How does the budget constraint represent the choices a consumer can afford?
How do indifference curves represent the consumer’s preferences?
What determines how a consumer divides her resources between two goods?
How does the theory of consumer choice explain decisions such as how much a consumer saves,
or how much labor she supplies?
Introduction
Recall one of the Ten Principles from Chapter 1:
People face tradeoffs.
Buying more of one good leaves
less income to buy other goods.
Working more hours means more income and more consumption, but less leisure time.
Reducing saving allows more consumption today but reduces future consumption.
This chapter explores how consumers make choices like these.
The Budget Constraint: What the Consumer Can Afford
Example: Hurley divides his income between two goods: fish and mangos.
A “consumption bundle” is a particular combination of the goods, e.g., 40 fish & 300 mangos.
Budget constraint: the limit on the consumption bundles that a consumer can afford
Preferences: What the Consumer Wants
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Document Summary

Introduction: recall one of the ten principles from chapter 1: Indifference curve: shows bundles of consumption and leisure that give her the same level of satisfaction. It explains consumer behavior fairly well in many situations and provides the basis for more advanced economic analysis. Summary: a consumer"s budget constraint shows the possible combinations of different goods she can buy given her income and the prices of the goods. The slope of the budget constraint equals the relative price of the goods: an increase in income shifts the budget constraint outward. A change in the price of one of the goods pivots the budget constraint: a consumer"s indifference curves represent her preferences. An indifference curve shows all the bundles that give the consumer a certain level of happiness. At this point, the marginal rate of substitution equals the relative price of the two goods: the theory of consumer choice can be applied in many situations.

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