ECO-2023 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Guideposts, Logical Consequence, Opportunity Cost
Document Summary
Economics- the study of human behavior, with a particular focus on human decision- making. Origins date back to adam smith, a scottish moral philosopher, who expressed the first e(cid:272)o(cid:374)o(cid:373)i(cid:272) ideas i(cid:374) his (cid:271)reakthrough (cid:271)ook, (cid:862)an inquiry into the nature and causes of the. Smith sought to explain why people in some nations were wealthier than those in others. Economics is about scarcity and the choices we have to make because our desire for goods and services is for greater than their availability from nature. Scarcity prevents us from being able to completely fulfill our desires: present whenever there is less of a good or resource freely available from nature than people would like. Choice- the act of selecting among alternatives, is the logical consequence of scarcity. Resources- the ingredients, or inputs, that people use to produce goods and services: human- productive knowledge, skill, strength of human beings, physical- tools, machines, buildings, natural- land, mineral deposits, oceans, rivers.