什么是经济学和微观经济学？ (What are Economics and Microeconomics?)

Economics is a social science concerned with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. It studies how individuals, businesses, governments, and nations make choices on allocating resources to satisfy their wants and needs, trying to determine how these groups should organize and coordinate efforts to achieve maximum output.

经济学是一门社会科学，涉及商品和服务的生产，分配和消费。 它研究了个人，企业，政府和国家如何选择分配资源以满足其需求和需求，试图确定这些群体应如何组织和协调努力以实现最大产出。

One of the major types of economics is microeconomics. Microeconomics aims to model economic activities as an interaction of individual economic agents pursuing their private interests.

经济学的主要类型之一是微观经济学。 微观经济学旨在将经济活动建模为追求个体利益的个体经济主体的相互作用。

为什么微观经济学对数据科学家很重要？ (Why is microeconomics important to data scientists?)

A lot of people used to ask me “So you turned economics into Data Science?” Well, both of them have a lot of common interests, if one who knows economics well can have a better understanding of business and machine learning algorithms.

很多人曾经问我：“所以你把经济学变成了数据科学？” 好吧，如果对经济学非常了解的人可以对商业和机器学习算法有更好的了解，那么他们就有很多共同的兴趣。

Even though those researchers have the same title “Data Scientist”, their jobs and their industries could be very different — healthcare, telecommunications sector, internet, energy sector, retail companies, the automotive industry. If we look through those companies and their products, we can see that their target is the consumers, users, or members. Therefore, understanding how individuals make decisions is very vital, and based on the relevant data, companies can put forward corresponding strategies to keep consumers’ utility. If microeconomics is a direction then data science is a car so we can drive the car and go to the given direction.

即使这些研究人员具有相同的称呼“数据科学家”，他们的工作和所从事的行业也可能大不相同-医疗保健，电信行业，互联网，能源行业，零售公司，汽车行业。 如果我们查看那些公司及其产品，我们可以看到他们的目标是消费者，用户或成员。 因此，了解个人如何做出决定非常重要，并且公司可以根据相关数据提出相应的策略来保持消费者的效用。 如果说微观经济学是一个方向，那么数据科学就是一辆汽车，那么我们就可以开车去往给定的方向。

My previous blog explained the relationship between consumer behavior and behavioral economics, and how to analyze consumer behavior data using python. This blog will present the relationships between microeconomics and data science.

我以前的博客解释了消费者行为与行为经济学之间的关系，以及如何使用python分析消费者行为数据。 该博客将介绍微观经济学与数据科学之间的关系。

个人决策 (Individual Decision Making)

Individual decision making is the fundamental theory in microeconomics. It focuses on how individual consumers and agents make decisions. Those individuals could be a person, a household, a firm, or the government. For example, in the retail industry, data scientists will personalize shopping itineraries based on consumer behavior data. Understanding consumer behavior is an important aspect of marketing and microeconomics can explain how potential customers will respond to new products or new services, why they demand, and what they do at particular price levels.

个人决策是微观经济学的基本理论。 它着重于个人消费者和代理商如何做出决定。 这些人可以是个人，家庭，公司或政府。 例如，在零售业中，数据科学家将根据消费者行为数据来个性化购物路线。 了解消费者的行为是营销的重要方面，微观经济学可以解释潜在客户如何对新产品或新服务做出React，他们为什么要求以及在特定价格水平下的行为。

需求，效用和支出 (Demand, Utility, and Expenditure)

For all individuals, their income and their demand for some goods are limited. From the point of consumers’ perspective, the utility function is an invisible relationship between price and income and also represents the satisfaction of their choices. Basically, utility function considers an individual who wants to maximize utility from a limited income. On the other hand, consumers want to lower their expenditures and maximize their satisfaction. The goal for researchers is to analyze how the price changes affect people’s demand and to calculate how much we need to compensate to keep all consumer's utility stable and constant. We can apply data science methods and combine microeconomics to explore those important insights through the data.

对于所有人而言，他们的收入和对某些商品的需求是有限的。 从消费者的角度来看，效用函数是价格和收入之间的隐形关系，也代表了他们选择的满意度。 基本上，效用函数考虑的是一个想要从有限的收入中最大化效用的个人。 另一方面，消费者希望降低支出并最大化满意度。 研究人员的目标是分析价格变化如何影响人们的需求，并计算我们需要补偿多少以保持所有消费者的效用稳定不变。 我们可以应用数据科学方法，并结合微观经济学来通过数据探索那些重要的见解。

From the point of a company’s perspective, how to set up a price for a good under competitive economy is a big question. We can see during Covid-19, lots of companies have had big sales many times in order to manage their inventory and minimize losses. The after-discount price always changes by time. For example, Lancome had a promotion — Buy One Get One Free. Under the competitive economy, after Lancome’s promotion ended, Estee Lauder had the same promotion — Buy One Get One Free. Based on consumer reactions, those companies will launch smarter strategies to face this economic crisis.

从公司的角度来看，如何在竞争经济条件下为商品设定价格是一个大问题。 我们可以看到在Covid-19期间，许多公司为了管理库存并最大程度地减少损失而多次取得了大笔销售。 折后价始终随时间变化。 例如，兰蔻有促销活动-买一送一。 在竞争激烈的经济环境下，兰蔻的促销结束后，雅诗兰黛也进行了同样的促销-买一送一。 根据消费者的React，这些公司将推出更明智的战略来应对这场经济危机。

供应链，利润最大化，成本最小化 (Supply Chain, Profit maximization, Cost Minimization)

The supply chain is used to improve supply chain management (strategic decisions) for suppliers and customers of a company. It basically describes the business processes to satisfy a customer’s demands. Supply chains rely on data scientists who can capitalize on the data and microeconomics can help data scientists understand the relationship between profit maximization, cost minimization, and supply chain better.

供应链用于改善公司供应商和客户的供应链管理(战略决策)。 它基本描述了满足客户需求的业务流程。 供应链依赖可以利用数据的数据科学家，微观经济学可以帮助数据科学家更好地了解利润最大化，成本最小化和供应链之间的关系。

结论 (Conclusion)

Microeconomics helps data scientists to understand consumers’ decisions and also helps companies to make strategic decisions (supply chains)based on consumers’ responses.

微观经济学可以帮助数据科学家了解消费者的决策，还可以帮助企业根据消费者的React做出战略决策(供应链)。