EC120 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Opportunity Cost, Scientific Method
carminegrasshopper545 and 38337 others unlocked
30
EC120 Full Course Notes
Verified Note
30 documents
Document Summary
Economists play 2 roles: social scientists: try to explain the world, economists employ the scientific method, the development of methods and testing theories about how the world works, policy advisors: try to improve it. Assumptions simplify the complex world, make it easier to understand: ex. when studying international trade, we might assume the world consists of two countries and two goods. Very unrealistic, but simplifies the problem and yields useful insights about the more complicated real world. Economists use models to study economic issues. A model is a highly simplified representation of a more complicated reality. The production possibilities frontier and our second model. A graph that shows the combinations of two goods the economy can possibly produce given the available factors of production and the available production technology. Any point inside the curve= insufficient and unemployed resources. Moving along a ppf involves shifting resources (e. g. , labour) from the production of one good to the other.