Ch 1-3 Flashcards
(77 cards)
- a situation in which the amount of something available is insufficient to satisfy the desire for it
Scarcity
- what is given up when taking an action or making a choice
Opportunity Cost
- the dollars sacrificed, and actually paid out, for a choice
DEFN: Explicit Cost
- the value of something sacrificed when no direct payment is made
DEFN: implicit cost
What is the relationship between opportunity cost, explicit cost, and implicit cost?
opportunity cost = explicit cost + implicit cost
- the labor, land, capital, and entrepreneurship that are used to produce goods and services
DEFN: resources
- the time human beings spend producing goods and services
DEFN: labor
What are the (4) four economic resources?
- labor
- capital
- land
- entrepreneurship
- a long-lasting tool that is used to produce other goods
DEFN: capital
- physical stock like machinery, equipment, and factories;
- long-lasting things that help with the production of goods and services
DEFN: physical capital
- the skills and training of the labor force
human capital
- the total amount of capital in a nation that is productively useful at a particular point in time
DEFN: capital stock
- the physical space on which production takes place, as well as the nature resources that come with it
DEFN: land
- the ability and willingness to combine the other resources
DEFN: entrepreneurship
- anything, including a resource, used to produce a good or service
DEFN: inputs
- the study of the behavior of individual households, firms, and governments; analyzes individual parts of the economy rather than the whole
DEFN: microeconomics
-study of the behavior of the overall economy; looks at total economic output of an economy
DEFN: macroeconomics
- study of how an economy works; can be tested using facts
DEFN: positive economics
- the practice of recommending policies to solve economic problems
> goes beyond just facts
> requires a judgment be made by the individual making the statement and depends on individual’s values
** cannot be proved/disproved by facts alone
DEFN: normative economics
- an abstract representation of reality
DEFN: model
- any assumption that makes a model simpler without affecting any of its important conclusions
DEFN: simplifying assumptions
- assumptions that affect the conclusions of a model in an important way
> always one or more in an economic model
DEFN: critical assumptions
What does opportunity cost arise from?
- scarcity of resources
- to produce more of one thing, society must shift resources away from producing something else
A curve showing all combinations of two goods that can be produced with the resources and technology currently available
Defn: production possibilities frontier (PPF)