Exam Flashcards
What is grad domestic product (GDP)?
the market value of all final goods and services produced in an economy during a period of time
4 categories of GDP expenditure
- consumption
- investment
- government purchases
- net exports
GDP = _ + _ + _ + _ - _
C + I + G + X - M
GDP isn’t a good measure of economic well-being…
- Doesn’t include household production (G & S people produce for themselves)
- Doesn’t include underground economy (concealed buying/selling - poorer 50%)
- Doesn’t have info on distribution of GDP & income
- Doesn’t include value of leisure
- Doesn’t account for pollution/negative effect of production
- No adjusted for crime/social problems
GDP is measured using..
market values, not quantities & only includes the market value of final goods and services (new) in current production
labour force
total number of people who have jobs plus the number of people who don’t have jobs but are actively looking for a job
unemployment rate =
(number of employed/labour force) x 100
people are measured as being employed…
if they have worked 1 hour per week, which means unemployment doesn’t account for under-employment
discouraged workers (not included in unemployment)
people available for work who have not looked for a job during the previous four weeks because they believe no jobs are available for them
costs of unemployment
- causes GDP to be below its potential
- loss of human capital and retraining costs arise for the economy & individual
- reduces business profits
- governments receive less income tax + more unemployment benefits
- individual; poverty, loss of self-esteem etc
traditional economics
- assumes that consumers will choose to buy the combination of goods and services that make them as well off as possible from among all the combinations that their budgets allow them to buy
behavioural economics
- study of situations in which people act in ways that are not economically rational
when making decisions, consumers tend to make 3 mistakes..
- ignore non-monetary opportunity costs
- fail to ignore sunk costs
- unrealistic about future behaviour
externality
- a cost or benefit that arises from production or consumption and falls on someone other than the producer or the consumer
- arise due to lack of clearly defined property rights
negative externality
external cost - pollution (too much produced/consumed)
positive externality
external benefit - education (too little produced/consumed)
Common resource
an extreme case of externalities where no one can be denied access to the resource, but one person’s use of the resource reduces the possible use to others (e.g. overfishing/logging)
Public good
- good/service which an additional consumer does not ‘use up’ or prevent another’s use of it and no one can be excluded from consuming that good/service
(e. g. national defence, footpaths and street lighting)
asymmetric information
one party to an economic transaction may have less information than the other party
public good (market failure)
no one can be excluded - impossible to charge - therefore private sector won’t provide them
common good (market failure)
government regulation is necessary
adverse selection
situation in which one party to a transaction takes advantage of knowing more than the other party to a transaction (before it takes place)
adverse selection egs
- used car dealers (assure they aren’t buying a lemon)
- buyers of insurance will always know likelihood of event being insured against
- insurance companies cover their costs only if they set the prices of policies at levels that reflect how many claims for payment the people they have insured are likely to submit
moral hazard
the tendency of people who have insurance to change their actions because of the insurance or, more broadly, actions taken by one party to a transaction that are difference from what the other party expected at the time of transaction
