UNIT 1 Flashcards
What is economics the study of?
Economics is the study of scarcity and choice.
What is individual choice
Every economic issue involves, at its
most basic level, individual choice—decisions by individuals about what to do and what not to do.
Economy
An economy is a system for coordinating a
society’s productive and consumptive
activities.
Market Economy
In a market economy, the decisions of individual producers and consumers largely determine what, how, and for whom to produce, with little government involvement in the decisions
Property rights
Property rights establish ownership
and grant individuals the right to trade
goods and services with each other.
marginal analysis
Marginal analysis is the study of the
costs and benefits of doing a little bit
more of an activity versus a little bit less.
resource
A resource is anything that can be used
to produce something else.
land
Land refers to all resources that come
from nature, such as minerals, timber and
petroleum.
labor
Labor is the effort of workers.
capital
Capital refers to manufactured goods
used to make other goods and services.
entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship describes the efforts
of entrepreneurs in organizing resources
for production, taking risks to create new
enterprises, and innovating to develop
new products and production processes.
scarce resource
A scarce resource is not available in
sufficient quantities to satisfy all the various
ways a society wants to use it.
microeconomics
Microeconomics is the study of how
people make decisions and how those
decisions interact.
macroeconomics
Macroeconomics is concerned with the
overall ups and downs in the economy.
economic aggregate
Economic aggregates are economic
measures that summarize data across
many different markets.
positive economics
Positive economics is the branch of
economic analysis that describes the way
the economy actually works.
normative economics
Normative economics makes prescriptions
about the way the economy should work.
tradeoff
You make a trade-off when you give up
something in order to have something else.
PPC
The production possibilities curve
illustrates the trade-offs facing an economy
that produces only two goods. It shows the
maximum quantity of one good that can be
produced for each possible quantity of the
other goods produced.
efficiency
An economy is efficient if there is no way to
make anyone better off without making at least one person worse off.
Technology
Technology is the technical means for
producing goods and services.
market economy
In a market economy, individuals engage in
trade: they provide goods and services to
others and receive goods and services in
return.
gains from trade
There are gains from trade: people can get
more of what they want through trade than
they could if they tried to be self-sufficient.
comparative advantage
An individual has a comparative
advantage in producing a good or service if
the opportunity cost of producing the good or
service is lower for that individual than for
other people.
specialization
This increase in output is due to
specialization: each person specializes in
the task that he or she is good at performing.
absolute advantage
An individual has an absolute advantage
in producing a good or service if he or she
can make more of it with a given amount of
time and resources. Having an absolute
advantage is not the same thing as having a
comparative advantage.
utility
Utility is a measure of personal satisfaction.
util
A util is a unit of utility.
marginal utility
The marginal utility of a good or service is
the change in total utility generated by
consuming one additional unit of that good or
service.
marginal utility curve
The marginal utility curve shows
how marginal utility depends on the quantity
of a good or service consumed.