On Tuesday, 17^th July 2025, Dr. Sayyid Salman Rizavi, Professor of Economics at Hailey College, Lahore, delivered an insightful lecture on “Basic Concepts of Microeconomics for Decision Making” to participants of 38^th SMC at the National Institute of Public Administration, Lahore.

In his lecture, Dr. Rizavi offered a disciplined introduction to microeconomic principles, specifically designed for listeners encountering the discipline for the first time. He opened the discussion by framing economies as the inquiry into the allocation of finite resources across multiple, often competing, ends, a definition he traced to the foundational text of Paul A. Samuelson. He then clarified the microeconomic domain, which dissects the choices of households and firms, in contrast to macroeconomics, which aggregates those choices into national or global measures of economic activity.

Dr. Rizavi devoted the bulk of the session to several core microeconomic constructs: consumer and producer behaviour, the laws of demand and supply, and the condition of market equilibrium. He argued that rational agents, whether consumers or firms, pursue self-defined objectives and that their interactions may be modelled through utility maximisation for buyers and profit maximisation for sellers. He demonstrated, with a series of diagrams, the convergence of demand and supply curves to establish market price and quantity, and he examined the consequences of disequilibria—shortages and surpluses—as well as the theoretical and practical implications of interventions like price ceilings and floors.

The session examined key market structures: monopoly, duopoly, oligopoly, monopolistic competition, and perfect-competition. Dr. Rizavi articulated the distinctive characteristics of each and insisted that, regardless of the structure, the firm’s objective remains profit maximization. achieved when marginal cost aligns with marginal revenue, thereby establishing the producer’s equilibrium.

Using comparative examples, Dr. Rizavi illustrated market behaviour in both developed and developing nations. He cited the pivotal role of consumer awareness and governmental regulation in stabilizing prices, emphasizing the necessity of prompt policy intervention to prevent market abuse and to secure efficient resource allocation.

The discussion then turned to the factors of production, the nature of production functions, and the separation of fixed and variable costs. Dr. Rizavi clarified the concepts of normal profit and the broader cost structure, positioning these within the analytical framework of microeconomics. He recommended several authoritative statistical repositories, including the World Bank, the IMF, the OECD, and national bureaus of statistics, as avenues for deeper empirical research. The session remained interactive.