Using easy-to-understand visuals and explanations, this program explores the branch of economics that focuses on the elasticity or sensitivity of consumers at the household level and of producers at the company level. Viewers are introduced to the central problem of scarcity and the allocation of limited resources in order to produce (and consume) goods and services. Main concepts include the market system, the law of supply and demand, price elasticity, market structures, market failures, and governmental responses to those failures. Other terms students will encounter include production capacity, price floor, price ceiling, perfect competition, monopoly and monopolistic competition, and oligopoly.

Learn360 is distributed by Infobase for Films for the Humanities & Sciences, Cambridge Educational, Meridian Education, and Shopware. Encoded with permission for digital streaming by Infobase on June 09, 2012.

Introducing the Market System (2:46) -- Law of Demand and Supply (3:30) -- Price Elasticity (5:48) -- Market Structures (3:04) -- Market Failure & Government Response (4:02) -- Credits: Microeconomics: Understanding the Market System (0:32).