The Principles of Microeconomics examination covers material that is
usually taught in a one-semester undergraduate course in introductory
microeconomics, including economic principles that apply to the
behavioral analysis of individual consumers and businesses. You will
be required to apply analytical techniques to hypothetical as well as
real-world situations and to analyze and evaluate economic decisions.
You're expected to demonstrate an understanding of how free markets
work and allocate resources efficiently, how individual consumers make
economic decisions to maximize utility, and how individual firms make
decisions to maximize profits. You must be able to identify the
characteristics of the different market structures and analyze the
behavior of firms in terms of price and output decisions. You should
also be able to evaluate the outcome in each market structure with
respect to economic efficiency, identify cases in which private
markets fail to allocate resources efficiently, and explain how
government intervention fixes or fails to fix the resource allocation
problem. It is also important to understand the determination of wages
and other input prices in factor markets, and be able to analyze and
evaluate the distribution of income.