Economic Principles Analysis
The key concepts: what you need to know and (more importantly) why
Economics: Coping with Scarcity
The grass is always greener on the other side.A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.The early bird catches the worm.Sometimes it seems like half the quirky idiomatic expressions in the Englis...
Trade-Offs and Opportunity Costs
In practice, economists tend not to talk about early birds and greener grasses. They've developed their own more technical vocabulary to describe the world of scarcity and choice. For e...
Factors of Production
People think economics is about dollars and sense. Er, cents. And it is (on both counts).But economic choices involve more than just money. Money, or income, is just one of severa...
Production Possibilities
How does a person or a company or an entire nation make smart decisions about tradeoffs and opportunity costs? Consider, for example, the production possibilities of a small country that has...
Measuring Economic Success: Growth, Productivity, and Equity
Economics is all about making (hopefully) smart choices to cope with scarcity. But how do we know if the choices we make, individually or in aggregate as a nation, lead to good outcomes?Indiv...