Class 12 · Book 1 of 2
NCERT Introductory Microeconomics: Class 12 Chapters Explained
Quick answerIntroductory Microeconomics is the Class 12 NCERT book on how individual consumers, firms and markets make choices. Its six chapters cover scarcity and choice, consumer behaviour and demand, production and costs, the competitive firm, market equilibrium with price controls, and monopoly and other non-competitive markets.
Reviewed and approved by Dr. Anamika ShrivastavaPublished Last updated
Chapters in Introductory Microeconomics
All six chapters, in textbook order. Each page has a quick answer, worked examples, ten important questions and ten PSC/UPSC points.
- 1Read now
Introduction
Scarcity and choice, the production possibility frontier, planned and market economies, positive and normative economics.
- 2Read now
Theory of Consumer Behaviour
Budget line, indifference curves, the consumer's optimum, demand, market demand and price elasticity.
- 3Read now
Production and Costs
Production function, total, average and marginal product, returns to scale and cost curves.
- 4Read now
The Theory of the Firm under Perfect Competition
Revenue, profit maximisation, the firm's supply curve, shut-down point and elasticity of supply.
- 5Read now
Market Equilibrium
Demand and supply together, shifts, free entry and exit, wages, price ceilings and price floors.
- 6Read now
Non-Competitive Markets
Monopoly, monopolistic competition and how firms behave in oligopoly.
How the chapters connect
The book builds one market, step by step. Chapter 2 gives the buyers' side, a demand curve from a consumer's choice. Chapters 3 and 4 give the sellers' side, costs and a competitive firm's supply curve. Chapter 5 puts demand and supply together to find the price, and Chapter 6 asks what changes when firms are not price takers.
If you are short of time, master cost curves first: the supply curve, the shut-down point and the monopoly equilibrium all depend on them.