As a result, undergraduate students struggle to understand even the abstracts of papers on the complex representations of microeconomic reality that fill research journals. And, in many areas – such as antitrust analysis, auction design, taxation, environmental policy, and industrial and financial regulation – policy applications have come to be considered the domain of specialists.
事实上，微观经济学教科书的内容有至少20年没被修改过。以致面对那些研究期刊中大量关于微观经济现实复杂陈述的论文，一个本科学生甚至连摘要都难以理解。同时在许多领域——如反托拉斯分析，拍卖设计，税务，环境政策，产业和金融监管——的政策应用已被认为是专家的范畴。