1 Production Possibilities, Opportunity Cost and Economic Growth ©2006 South-Western College Publishing
Dec 14, 2015
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Production Possibilities, Opportunity Cost and
Economic Growth
©2006 South-Western College Publishing
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What are the three fundamental
economic questions?
What to produce?How to produce?
For whom to produce?
People face tradeoffs.
To get one thing, we usually have to give up another thing. Guns v. butter Food v. clothing Leisure time v. work Efficiency v. equity
Making decisions requires trading off one goal against another.
Decisions require comparing costs and benefits of
alternatives.
Whether to go to college or to work? Whether to study or go out on a date? Whether to go to class or sleep in?
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Can opportunity cost be something other
than money? Yes, that most desired activity that you are presently giving up is considered an opportunity cost
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What ismarginal analysis?An examination of the effects of additions to or subtractions from a current situation
Rational people think at the margin.
Marginal changes are small, incremental adjustments to an existing plan of action.
People make decisions by comparing costs and benefits at the margin.
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What is an example of marginal analysis?
When your benefit of studying these slides exceeds the opportunity cost, you will spend time studying these slides
Our Second ModelThe Production Possibilities
Frontier
The production possibilities frontier is a graph showing the various combinations of output that the economy can possibly produce given the available factors of production and technology.
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What assumptions underlie the productions
possibilities model?• Fixed resources• Fully employed resources• Technology unchanged
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What is the conclusion of the production
possibilities curve?Scarcity limits an economy to points on or below its production possibilities curve
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What is the law of increasing
opportunity costs?
The principle that the opportunity cost increases as production of one output expands
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What iseconomic growth?
The ability of an economy to produce greater levels of output, an outward shift of its production possibilities curve
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What makes possible economic growth?
Research and development of new technologies
Increase production in excess of worn out capital
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What happens when a country does not invest
in new technology?Everything else being equal,
the country will not grow
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What is investment?The accumulation of capital, such as factories, machines, and inventories, that is used to produce goods and services
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What is the opportunity cost of
investment?The consumer goods that could have been purchased with the money spent for plants and other capital
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What does an increase in investments make
possible in the future?Economic growth and more goods and services