Microeconomics Midterm Flashcards
what is economics about?
choices
What is scarcity?
- the reason we have choices
- limited resources and unlimited desires
what is opportunity cost?
The cost of any choice is what we have to give up in order to get it
what is marginal change?
small adjustments overtime for a plan of action
what is rational?
people do the best they can to achieve their goals given their available opportunities
what is economy?
all the choices made by a group of people
What is the difference between scientist and policy advisors?
scientists try to explain the world and policy advisors try to improve it
what are the two kinds of statements?
positive and nominative
Describe a positive statement
Positive statements are descriptive:
-Attempt to describe the world as it is
-Can be true or false
-Good is too open ended and causes a statement to be normative
-Confirm or refute by examining evidence: “minimum wage laws cause employment”
describe a nominative statement
Normative statements are prescriptive:
-Attempt to prescribe how the world should be
example: “The government should raise the minimum wage”
what are incentives?
anything that motivates a person to want or do something
what is a market?
- group of people who wish to buy or sell a certain good or service
- group of buyers and sellers of a particular good or service
what are the market outcomes? Describe them.
Price
- What do you have to give up to get a good/service?
Quantity
- How much of society’s resources are available for that purpose?
Who
- Who gets to participate and who doesn’t?
Why do people even want to buy and trade?
People want more than they can produce, want more than we have
what is the production possibility frontier (PPF)?
-A graph that shows the tradeoff between producing two different goods
-Shows all of the combinations of those two goods that an individual, group, or society can possibly produce
what is the feasible set in the PPF?
The area underneath the graph line is called the feasible set because anything under is feasible
what is comparative advantage?
is the ability to produce a good at a lower opportunity cost than other producers
-example: apple computer is a huge corporation, but doesn’t make everything in the world, therefore other companies have comparative advantages
what is absolute advantage?
the ability to produce a good or service more efficiently than its competitors
what are buyers?
a group of people that determine the demand for the prosecute
what are sellers?
a group of people that determine the supply based on the demand
what are the outcomes we care about?
The price of the good
- What do you have to give up to get it?
What is the quantity produced?
- How much of society’s resources are allocated to this good?
Who gets to participate?
- Who gets left out?
what are perfectly competitive markets?
- All goods are exactly the same
- A market in which there are many buyers and many sellers so that the behavior of an individual buyer or seller has little impact on the market price
what are price takers?
a market participant that is not able to dictate the prices in a market
what is quantity demand?
amount buyers are willing and able to purchase
what is the law of demand?
if the good is cheaper the buyer wants to buy more
what is market demand?
sum of an individual demands for a good or service
what is quantity supplied?
amount of goods sellers are willing and able to sell
what is the law of supply?
If the price is higher, more sellers are willing to make more product
- example: If the price of corn is higher, more farmers are willing to plant more corn
what is a supply schedule?
table shows the relationship between price of good and quantity supplied