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Dear Yahoo!:
What is the difference between macroeconomics and microeconomics?
Jason
Warren, Michigan
Dear Jason:
To answer your question, we visited OneLook Dictionaries, a good place to research all kinds of definitions. As a specialized search engine, it indexes web-based dictionaries and directs your query to the most appropriate resources -- kind of like a reference librarian who points you in the right direction.

We typed in "microeconomics," which led us to the FACS Journalist's Guide to Economic Terms, part of a thoughtful collection of reference tools for journalists. We learned that microeconomics studies the behavior of discrete parts of the economy -- the individual, the household, the company. It looks at how prices are determined, and how prices then determine production, distribution, and use of goods and services.

We scrolled up the page to see how this related to "macroeconomics," and saw it was a matter of scope and scale. Macroeconomics examines whole economic systems and how different sectors interact. This perspective considers issues of income, output and growth, inflation, and unemployment. National economic policies and complexities of industrial production come into play.

It's worth noting that all the results returned by OneLook led to sources that eventually got us the answer to your question. For instance, InvestorWords, which offers a glossary of financial terms, easily allowed us to track down the appropriate definitions.

 
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