Economics is the social science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services and with the theory and management of economies or economic systems. All economists agree on one thing, the economy is large and it is unpredictable. However, throughout the years economists have developed some simple but widely applicable principles that are useful when trying to understand decisions that are made by everyday people to the workings of highly complex markets. There are Seven Core Principles of Economics. These principles are: Scarcity Principle, Cost-Benefit Principle, Principle of Unequal Costs, Principle of Comparative Advantage, Principle of Increasing Opportunity Cost, Equilibrium Principle, and …show more content…
The concept of cost-benefit sounds simple enough but to apply it you have to decide how to measure relative costs and benefits which can become tricky. Different people may feel differently about the value of different things. A classic example is whether a not you should walk downtown to save $100 on a $500 dollar guitar. The benefit here is saving $100. The cost being the time it takes for you to walk downtown and what else you could be doing in that time. If you feel that your time is worth $100 than you make the trip downtown. If you feel your time is not worth a $100 then you do not make the trip. However if you decide to make the trip then you should make that same trip to save $100 even if you are buying a $3,000 painting. It is important to ignore proportions and focus on absolute dollar amounts.
As long as the marginal benefit of an activity exceeds the marginal cost, people are better off doing more of it. But as soon as the marginal cost exceeds the marginal benefit, they suddenly become better off doing less of that specific activity. This can be used when deciding how many employees a company should have. To produce the profit-maximizing level of output and hire the optimal number of workers, and other resources, producers must compare the marginal benefits and marginal costs of producing a little more with the marginal benefits and marginal costs of producing a little less. You can decide how many workers to hire for a profit-maximizing car company by
The next concept is “Decisions are made at the margin” this meant that individuals wanted to get the most out their resources. You want to have most benefits out your actions. One thing that the authors put emphasis on is the fact that all
1. Describe two examples of important things that financial planning skills can help you do, and explain why these things are important to you personally. (4-6 sentences. 2.0 points)
In understanding economics first summarize what is economics. No universally definition of economics. Although it defined as the study of how individuals and groups make decisions with limited resources, coordinate their wants and desires, given the decision mechanisms, social custom, and political realities of the society. Economic are operative in aspect of lives, market forces of goods sold in a market but supply and demand also used to analyzes situation in which economic forces operate. In addition to the study of
2. The key economic concept that serves as the basis for the study of economics is:
Economic ideas provide a conceptual framework for understanding the forces that shape our personal and public lives.
The three economic stances that a government may have are neutral stances, which indicate a balanced economy and leads to more tax revenue for the government. The second stance is the expansionary stance, which implies that the government is allocating or spending more money than it collects.
The three economic stances are, Stock Market: Is where stocks are bought and sold, Fiscal Policy: The government allowed to collect money within the state, and Economic Resources: The resources that include natural resources that are manufactured resources that are produced as things we need.
There are ten economic principles and of those ten, Krell points out four in this particular article. The first principle
Economics is the branch of knowledge concerned with the production, consumption, and transfer of wealth. Economics can even be used a few different ways. They are the study of scarcity, the study of how people use resources, or the study of decision-making. One of the central tenets of economics is that people want certain things and will change their behavior to get those things according to American Economic Association. The economic study ranges from the very small to the very large. Much of economics involves the use of data gathered by governments, businesses, or in the laboratory to test the hypotheses about whether a certain program, event, or incentive will have the expected effect. Our nation is affected by economics in the way that you work, spend money, eat, simply just how you live on a regular
Three economic stances a government may have are neutral, expansionary, and contractionary. A neutral stance indicates a balanced economy. In most cases this stance leads to more tax revenue for the government. Expansionary implies that the government is spending or allocating more money than it collect. Contractionary implies that the government is collecting more money than it spends of allocates.
The cost of something is what you give up to get it. Opportunity cost is defined by
The #2 economic principle would be best suitable to describe the phrase "there is no such thing as a free lunch." People have endless needs and wants and when they're are struck with deciding on an opportunity cost, they are choosing something something while losing something else. Say you do get a free lunch, it's not free since you put time off doing something resourceful and it's not free for the people that gave you that free lunch. They used up time and limited resources to make that lunch. The #1 principle would apply in this situation. Resources are scarce so were paying the cost of losing them in the future. Nothing is technically
The Economy is the backbone to society. There are many factors that operate in, and govern our society’s economical structure. Factors such as scarcity and choice, opportunity cost, marginal analysis, microeconomics, macroeconomics, factors of production, production possibilities, law of increasing opportunity cost, economic systems, circular flow model, money, and economic costs and profits all contribute to what is known as the economy. These properties as well as a few others, work together to influence the economy. Microeconomics and Macroeconomics are two major components. Both of these are broken down into several different components that dictate societal norms and views.
For example, when a good is scarce, the prices goes up, so consumers try to avoid buying and therefore conserving the resource. Then, the suppliers want to find more of the source as to get a better profit. The reasons behind their actions are selfish, yet they benefit all of society. Smith identified that the pursuit of profit and the power of self-interest would increase motivation and result in more advances in technology. His model of capitalism was on the basis of freedom and selfishness as a motivator for society. It was also on the basis that the economy would go through recessions and expansions but fix itself. Recessions are periods in the economy in which unemployment goes up, while profits and spending goes down; a slowdown of the economy. An expansion is essentially the exact opposite. The classical model of economics states that the economy will continue to go through these fluctuations over time and will fix itself with no help, thus not needing a government to give influence.
Dr. William Easterly describes the basic principle of economics as people do what they are paid to do; what they don 't get paid to do they don 't do. He attributes the failure to achieve the quest with failure in applying the basic principle to policy work. He says that the trinity of first world aid donors, third world governments, and third world citizens should all have their incentives aligned for growth to occur.