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ECO Topic 1 Vocab
ECO Topic 1 Vocabulary Lessons 1,2,3 PEARSON 2016
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| need | something essential for survival |
| want | something that people desire but is not necessary for survival |
| goods | the physical objects that someone produces |
| services | the actions or activities that one person performs for another |
| scarcity | the principle that limited amounts of goods and services are available to meet unlimited wants |
| economics | the study of how people seek to satisfy their needs and wants by making choices |
| shortage | a situation in which consumers want more of a good or service than producers are willing to make available at a particular price |
| entrepreneur | a person who decides how to combine resources to create goods and services |
| factors of production | the factors that are used to goods and services |
| land | all natural resources used to produce goods and services |
| labor | the effort people devote to tasks for which they are paid |
| capital | any human-made objects used to create other goods and services |
| physical capital | the human-made object used to create other goods and services |
| human capital | the knowledge and skills a worker gains through education and experience |
| trade-off | the alternatives that we give up when we choose one course of action over another |
| guns or butter | a phrase expressing the idea that a country that decides to produce more military goods has fewer resources to produce consumer goods and vice versa |
| opportunity cost | the most desirable alternative given up as the result of a decision |
| thinking at the margin | the process of deciding how much more or less to do |
| cost/benefit analysis | a decision-making process in which you compare what you will sacrifice and gain by a specific action |
| marginal benefit | the extra benefit of adding one unit |
| production possibilities curve (PPC) | a graph that shows alternative ways to use an economy's productive resources |
| production possibilities frontier (PPF) | a line on a production possibilities curve that shows the maximum possible output an economy can produce |
| efficiency | the use of resources in such a way as to maximize the output of goods and services |
| underutilization | the use of fewer resources than an economy is capable of using |
| law of increasing costs | an economic principle which states that as production shifts from making one goods or service to another, more resources are needed to increase production of the second good or service |