ECON 201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Opportunity Cost, Externality, Market Power

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What is economics?
• Economics is the study of allocating limited resources to satisfy unlimited wants.
Example:
- You have a couple of hours to spend on studying economics and/or psychology.

- You have $1000 to spend on food, clothes, vacation, and/or tuition. 
- You have three months in the summer to take courses, get a job, and/or nap,
bike, swim, etc. 
#1: People have to choose. 
- You can spend all of your time studying economics, you can spend all of your
time studying psychology, or you can divide your time between the two subjects. 
- Society faces an important tradeoff between efficiency and equity. 
o Efficiency means getting the most possible from the scarce resources. It is also
known as the economic pie. Higher efficiency results in a bigger pie.
o Equity means dividing the benefits of those resources fairly among people.
o When government policies are designed, these two goals often conflict. In other
words, when the government tries to divide the economic pie into more equal
pieces, the pie gets smaller.
#2: Choices are always costly.
- Making decision requires comparing the costs and benefits of alternative
choices. 
- The cost of some actions is not as obvious as it might first appear. 
- If you choose to spend all your time studying economics, you will not be able to
study psychology. Then, what is the cost of studying economics? Not being able to
study psychology. 
- What is the cost of spending $1000 on vacation? Not being able to register at
university. 
- What is the cost of studying? Not having a vacation. Not having a job and
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income. 
- It is called opportunity cost: the opportunity cost of an item is what you give up
to get that item. 
- The opportunity cost of studying in the summer is not having a vacation, not
having a job and/or not having income. 
Numerical example #1:
Assume that you have a fixed numbers of hours (say 10 hours) to spend reading a few chapters
of economics and/or psychology. The table and the graph below show the number of chapters
you can read spending all your time on both courses.
Numerical example #2:
Assume that Sarah gives up a job that pays $30,000 per year to go to university. Her costs are
$4000 for tuition and $16,000 for food and rent. What is the opportunity cost of spending one
year at university?
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ECON 201 Full Course Notes
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Document Summary

What is economics: economics is the study of allocating limited resources to satisfy unlimited wants. You have a couple of hours to spend on studying economics and/or psychology. You have to spend on food, clothes, vacation, and/or tuition. You have three months in the summer to take courses, get a job, and/or nap, bike, swim, etc. You can spend all of your time studying economics, you can spend all of your time studying psychology, or you can divide your time between the two subjects. Society faces an important tradeoff between efficiency and equity: efficiency means getting the most possible from the scarce resources. It is also known as the economic pie. Higher efficiency results in a bigger pie: equity means dividing the benefits of those resources fairly among people, when government policies are designed, these two goals often conflict. In other words, when the government tries to divide the economic pie into more equal pieces, the pie gets smaller.

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