Microeconomics, as a branch of economics, is sometimes seen as too abstract, too theoretical, making unrealistic assumption about what goes on in the real world.
Does the academic study of microeconomic concepts: production and demand functions, equilibriums, elasticities, market structures etc. give you an edge over your competitor who has never opened an economics textbook and who has never set foot in a university but who happens to be an intelligent, experienced, down-to-earth and street-wise businessman?
Note that this is not about different personalities (bookish nerd vs. alpha-type business leader). It’s about the added value of theoretical economic knowledge.
Businesses evolve in a competitive environment over time. So, it stands to reason, that if every business in a given market uses resources to measure calculate and apply microeconomic principles to its operations, then doing so provides a competitive advantage; which is undeniably a useful thing.
Generally, microeconomics are more useful than macroeconomics.
A key factor in science is the ability to have a Control group and a Treatment group. This is flumoxed in the macro cases by there being very few groups (e.g. countries) to start with, and for any one country, there are very few comparable other countries, since each has a different culture, a different legal system, different taxation system, they’re passing thousands of laws every year, different industries are prevalent, resources are allocated randomly, etc. A comparison of the US and the UK, for example, will probably reveal more about the author than it does about the subject. That may be his politics, or it may just be his lack of understanding of how another country works.
But in microeconomics - and microeconomics aren’t just concerned with businesses, they can also be interested in subjects like whether having a strange name helps or holds you back as you go through life - there’s a lot more data samples. If you’re studying hospitals, you can compare different hospitals within the same state, and be relatively certain that the legal and cultural framework are going to be the same. And with thousands or tens of thousands of hospitals in the US, you have lots of samples to refer to.
Amassing all the data you need is hard, of course. But if you can get it, there’s a far greater chance that the result is based on reasonable science, rather than convoluted math based on starting assumptions like, “Man is inherently a rational actor, thus…”
Exactly how useful that result is will depend on the research, in specific, but certainly science is more useful to the real world than non-science.
I’m not even a business manager, just a lowly process engineer / SAP consultant, but “Business Management for Engineers (How to Speak with an Accountant)” may have been the most useful course I ever took.
My 8-years-younger brother has a Business degree; he asked for my notes from that class out of curiosity and returned them saying “I should have asked for these years ago! Your teacher didn’t go into every nook and cranny nor try to, but all the key concepts are there.”
Those concepts have helped me for starters in being able to understand better what people from Finance or Sales were saying, in being better able to explain to them what Ops needs, in selling my own services better, in knowing how to calculate my rates, etc. I see some of my colleagues always chasing one more euro/hour - and I not only think “man, that’s got to be tiresome”, I can explain exactly how stupid they are in money terms, never mind how many bridges they keep burning (ex.: 1€/h more, 8h/day and don’t try to charge for more, hotel costs 20€/day more: you’re losing 12€/day, genius!).