Book review: Microeconomics Made Simple

How simple can microeconomics be? Can a person learn the basics by reading a book of only 100 pages? If we look at Microeconomics Made Simple, by Austin Frakt and Mike Piper, the answer is clearly yes.

Frakt and Piper set themselves an ambitious goal. However, they are careful not to over-pitch the book, at least to students:

For any students using this book in an academic setting: If your professor expects you to read a several-hundred-page textbook, please do not think that you can read this book instead and learn all of the same information. This book may serve as an introduction - a way to get a grip on the basics so that the textbook is easier to understand - but it's not meant to be a replacement for a comprehensive text.

Although the book was published back in 2014 (which is when I bought it, and it has sat unread on my bookshelf ever since), it has aged well, helped by the fact that key economic concepts don't change much over time. Across 11 chapters, Frakt and Piper cover the basics of utility and opportunity cost, production possibilities and the gains from trade, demand and supply and government intervention in markets, costs of production, and market structures (perfect competition, monopoly, oligopoly, and monopolistic competition). And they do a great job. The book is clearly written and, although it doesn't go into the depth that a textbook would, or provide the same range of examples as a textbook, it likely achieves its goal of providing a basic level of understanding of microeconomics.

I see a different use of the text than Frakt and Piper though. Rather than encouraging students to use this as an introduction, which they would build on in by later reading a more comprehensive textbook, I think this book would serve as an excellent refresher for those who studied microeconomics some years ago and want to be reminded of the key points. If that describes you, then I highly recommend this book.