🏀 CATEGORY 1: GOVERNMENT
A basketball league has one commissioner who makes every important decision. The teams and players have no say in the decisions. What form of government is this most similar to?
Autocracy
A basketball team allows its players to vote for their team captain. What type of government is this decision-making process most similar to?
Democracy
A basketball team has only enough money to buy either new uniforms or new basketballs. What economic concept explains why the team has to make a choice?
Scarcity
Imagine a sports league where the same equipment, rules, and traditions have been passed down from older generations of players. Teams continue doing things the way they have always been done. What economic system is this most similar to?
Traditional economy
A basketball team in Atlanta has extra jerseys but needs basketballs. Another team has extra basketballs but needs jerseys. The teams agree to exchange them. What economic activity are they participating in?
Trade
A professional sports league is controlled by five team owners. These five owners make the important decisions for the entire league. What form of government is this most similar to?
Oligarchy
A football team holds an election, and the player who receives the most votes becomes captain. What democratic principle is being used?
Majority rule / citizen participation/ Voting process
A football team has to decide whether to spend its money on new helmets, new jerseys, or better training equipment. Which economic question is the team answering?
What to produce?
A basketball league's central office decides how many basketballs each team gets, what equipment teams can buy, and how much each team can spend. What economic system is this most similar to?
Command economy
A baseball team specializes in producing high-quality baseball gloves and trades some of its gloves to another team for bats. Why does specialization encourage trade?
The team focuses on producing something it specializes in and trades for goods it needs.
A soccer team is controlled by a king who inherited his position from his family. What form of government is this most similar to?
Monarchy
In a soccer league, team representatives meet in a council to make decisions for all of the teams. What type of democracy is this most similar to?
Parliamentary democracy
A baseball team decides to use machines to make its own baseballs instead of hiring workers to make them by hand. Which economic question is the team answering?
How to produce?
A soccer league allows individual teams to decide what equipment they want to buy. Teams and fans make decisions based on buying and selling in the marketplace. What economic system is this most similar to?
Market economy
A soccer league places an extra tax on equipment imported from another country. What type of trade barrier is this?
Tariff
Imagine a sports league where religious leaders make the league's rules and decisions based on religious laws. What form of government is this most similar to?
Theocracy
In a basketball league, fans vote directly for one person to serve as league president. The president then leads the executive side of the league. Which type of democracy is this most similar to?
Presidential democracy
A basketball team has 100 new jerseys but must decide whether to sell them to players, fans, or another team. Which economic question is the team answering?
For whom to produce?
A football league allows teams and businesses to make many of their own economic decisions, but the league office also creates rules and regulations. What economic system is this most similar to?
Mixed economy
A basketball league allows only 1,000 basketballs from another country to enter the league each year. What type of trade barrier is this?
Quota
A sports league has one powerful leader who controls the teams, makes the rules, and does not allow teams or players to challenge the decisions. Which form of government is this most similar to? Explain your answer.
Autocracy/dictatorship — one leader has most or all of the power.
A football league allows teams to elect representatives who make rules for the league. The representatives choose the league's executive leader. Which type of democracy is this most similar to, and what makes it different from a presidential democracy?
Parliamentary democracy. The executive leader is connected to/selected through the legislature, rather than being separately elected by citizens.
A basketball player chooses to spend Saturday working at a sports store instead of practicing basketball. What is the opportunity cost of the player's decision?
The next-best alternative given up — practicing basketball.
Imagine four sports leagues:
Which league represents a mixed economy?
League D
A football league completely refuses to allow its teams to trade with another country's sports league. No goods can be bought or sold between them. What type of trade barrier is this?
Embargo