Econ B200
Study Questions
First Exam


 1.  What is economics?
2.  What questions to economists attempt to answer?
3.  What is scarcity?
4.  How does the data that social scientists (like economists) study differ from the data that hard
    scientists (like physicists) study?
5.  What does "opportunity cost" mean?
6.  What is the broken window fallacy and describe a situation where it might take place (besides
    the broken window).
7.  What happens when two people make an exchange?
8.  Is exchange always mutually beneficial? Why or why not?
9.  What does the production possibilities frontier represent?
10. What does marginal opportunity cost mean?
11. How does the production possibilities frontier shift out over time and what does
    that mean when it does?
12. What is the law of increasing marginal opportunity cost? Be sure to be able to explain it.
13. What are some of the ways by which can categorize economies? (i.e. differences
      in the rules of the game).
14. What is absolute advantage?
15. What is comparative advantage?
16. How does the concept of comparative advantage relate to trade in general?
17. Who is Adam Smith?
18. Who is David Ricardo?
19. What book did Adam Smith publish in 1776?
20. What was Adam Smith’s main point in this book?
21. How did Adam Smith say a country could increase productivity?
22. How do productivity, division and specialization of labor, mutual interdependency,
    and trade all relate to one another?
23. What does marginal benefit mean?
24. What does marginal cost mean?

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