If you have just started exploring your options in economics, you might have come across the terms Macroeconomics and Microeconomics. What exactly is the difference between the two?
Let’s start with Microeconomics. Microeconomics studies the individual person, firm or industry. It deals with decisions made by these actors and the theories associated with them. It primarily deals with topics such as demand and supply, income and expenditure, consumption, etc. So, microeconomics will study things like incomes of people, what people do with this income, how they get loans, how companies want to run on profits, etc.
Macroeconomics on the other hand, studies the economy as a whole. It studies economic decisions and problems of whole countries, and entire industries. It deals with problems like Gross Domestic Product, national income, economic development and growth, trade, import-export, taxation policies, international economics, etc.
So, if you end up studying microeconomics, you will learn a lot of about people and how they make individual economic and financial decisions. You will learn about how they take out loans, or why people consume more salt than caviar, or why your local car salesman is always trying to push you into buying the bigger car.
On the other hand, if you study macroeconomics, you will study about why Australia wants to do trade with China, or why we are in so much debt, and exactly where all that money you are paying as tax goes!
Economics for Beginners 