First Monthly Flashcards
Goods
All physical objects people need and want
Services
All non-physical activities people need and want
Resources
The inputs used to produce goods and services wanted by people, also known as FACTORS OF PRODUCTION
Scarcity
The heart of economics theory; the condition in which available resources are limited, they are not enough to produce everything that human beings need and want.
Choices
The conflict between unlimited wants and scarce resources
Economics is a study of choices, or selecting among alternatives, due to the scarcity of resources
Economics
The study of choices leading to the best possible use of scarce resources in order to best satisfy unlimited human needs and wants.
The choices made by economists generate positive and negative outcomes, these outcomes affect the relative well-being of individuals and societies. As a social science, economics examines these choices through the use of models and theories.
Microeconomics
- Examines the behaviour of individual decision-making units
- Choices made at the level of producers and consumers in individual markets
- microscope point of view
Macroeconomics
- Examines the economy as a whole to obtain a broad picture of the economy.
- Choices made at the level of the government and the national economy
- telescope point of view
What to produce
what particular goods and services and what quantities of these they wish to produce.
How to produce
how to use resources to produce goods and services
For whom to produce
How the goods and services produced are to be distributed among the population.
Sunk Cost
The cost that has already been occurred in that past that cannot be recovered
Opportunity cost
The value of the next best alternative that must be given up or sacrificed in order to obtain something else.
It is the real cost
Trade-offs
requires opportunity cost
Government Trade-offs
- trade-off between “guns and butter.”
- trade-off between a clean environment and a high rate of economic growth and high level of income.
Free good
Any good that is not scarce (zero opportunity cost)
Economic good
Any good that is scarce (opportunity cost greater than zero)
Free market economy
based on the market approach
Planned economy
based on the command approach;
- An economy where all economic decision-making is carried out by government planning rather than reliance on prices determined by the market, to be contrasted with free market economy.
Mixed economy
What most real worlds are implementing;
Any economy that combines the command approach with the market approach to resource ownership, decision making and rationing.
Ceteris Paribus
Assumption in economic model building, means “other things equal” in latin, Excepting the variables we are studying, everything else does not change.
2. The aim is to isolate the effect of each one of the variables.
Economists
Plays different roles;
1. as a scientist, make positive statement to describe and explain how economy actually works.
2. as a policy advicer, make normstive statements to advice how things ought to work.
Positive Statement
Objective and Descriptive
may be true or false
Normative statement
Subjective and Prescriptive
Cannot be true or false, it can only be assessed relative to beliefs and value judgement.