This past weekend I attended the St. Louis Fed’s Professors Conference with my good friend Ryan Baranowski. On our drive back to Cedar Rapids IA we were discussing how students read hundreds of tweets each day but barely crack open their textbook. We joked about how maybe the textbook needs to be only in tweets…

So I decided that instead of getting items on my to-do list checked off on my flights back to State College, I would see if I could summarize each chapter that I teach out of a micro economics textbook into it’s own single tweet. This is what I came up with:

Ch 1: People respond to incentives & should think at the margin. Markets work; except when they dont. Gov’ts are bad; except when they arent — James Tierney (@James_Tierney) November 17, 2015

Ch 2: Tradeoffs exist. A lower opportunity cost leads to a comparative advantage. If this exists, we have gains from trade. Graph a PPF. — James Tierney (@James_Tierney) November 17, 2015

Ch 3: Prices allocate goods and services efficiently. Supply meets demand at equilibrium. Shortage? Prices go up. Surplus? Prices go down. — James Tierney (@James_Tierney) November 17, 2015

Ch 4: Paying < you’re willing to leads to consumer surplus. Receiving > you’re willing to leads to producer surplus. Deadweight loss sucks. — James Tierney (@James_Tierney) November 17, 2015

Ch 5: Price floor: cant charge below. Price ceiling: cant charge above. Taxes are the same on consumer or producer (kinda). All lead to DWL. — James Tierney (@James_Tierney) November 17, 2015

Ch 6: Goods w/ many substitutes are elastic; a change in P leads to a large change in Q. The opposite is true. These goods are inelastic. — James Tierney (@James_Tierney) November 17, 2015

Ch 7: Sometimes actions cause costs/benefits to others. These are externalities, results in market failures. May need gov’t or Ronald Coase. — James Tierney (@James_Tierney) November 17, 2015

Ch 8: Utility is a fancy word for happiness. Maximize it by spending your budget and consume where marginal utilities per dollar are equal. — James Tierney (@James_Tierney) November 17, 2015

Ch 9: Firms face costs. Fixed costs are fixed; variable are variable. Avg costs? Divide by quantity. Marginal cost? Think additional. Graph! — James Tierney (@James_Tierney) November 17, 2015

Ch 10: Perf competitive firms face a horizontal demand curve & 0 econ profit in long run. Why? No barriers to entry. MR = MC is max profit. — James Tierney (@James_Tierney) November 17, 2015

Ch 11: Monopolies have 1 seller. Face the market demand. Find profit max Q & go up to demand curve to find P. Leads to DWL. Some are natural — James Tierney (@James_Tierney) November 17, 2015

Ch 12: Monopolistically competitive firms differentiate their products to get short-run profits. Sometimes they do this by advertising. — James Tierney (@James_Tierney) November 17, 2015

Ch 13: Oligopolies have only a few firms. Decisions depend on the other firms’ decisions. John Nash was important. Find the Nash EQ. — James Tierney (@James_Tierney) November 17, 2015

Ch 14: Behavioral economics is fun! But people are stupid. Play the dictator game; play the ultimatum game. See? Also; gifts are inefficient — James Tierney (@James_Tierney) November 17, 2015

Think I can get it published?