The claims of economists about the successes and failures of markets have enormous influence in public debates, yet the sources of those claims are often unclear. Microeconomics in Words demystifies microeconomic analyses by showing how they depend on simplifying assumptions and ethical judgments that could be made differently. As microeconomics is a model-based discipline, this book addresses what makes outcomes efficient in models of markets, and it questions when market efficiency is desirable. To make the material more accessible and to provide context for the ideas, the book adopts a word-based rather than mathematical approach and uses many examples from literary classics.

Starting with the basic model of supply and demand, the book layers on complications of taxes, market failures and their solutions, limitations on correcting them, and transaction costs and institutions. It focuses on both the insights and the limitations of economic analyses - not only what has been formally proven but also what is discussed less formally in seminars and articles. The book then turns to the topics of free trade and controversial markets for cigarettes and transplant organs to show how the tools and concepts that have been developed are used, and not used, in practice.