micro vs macro
This “zoom in” branch of economics studies how individuals, households, and firms make choices.
What is microeconomics?
Having limited resources to meet unlimited wants.
What is scarcity?
Every economic system must answer what to produce, how to produce it, and this third question.
What is who gets what is produced?
In this medieval system, serfs were bound to manors owned by lords and the Church.
What is feudalism?
Private property, free markets, competition, and this “motive” are the four features of capitalism.
What is the profit motive?
Bond prices and this measure of a bond’s annual return move in opposite directions, so when the Fed raises interest rates and bond prices fall, this number rises.
What is yield?
The unemployment rate rising during a recession falls into this branch of economics.
What is macroeconomics?
The value of what you give up when you make a choice.
What is opportunity cost?
“We do things the way we’ve always done them” describes this type of economy.
What is a traditional economy?
This 1347 event caused severe labor shortages and empowered peasants to demand cash wages.
What is the Black Death?
In capitalism, land, buildings, and machines are owned by private individuals rather than this.
What is the government?
This measure totals the value of all finished goods and services produced within a country over a specific time.
What is Gross Domestic Product (GDP)?
This term describes the joy you get from a choice.
What is utility?
In this type of economy, “the government decides” major production and distribution questions.
What is a command (planned) economy?
This 16th to 18th century system focused on gold accumulation, exports, and chartered monopolies like the East India Company.
What is mercantilism?
The Great Depression of 1929 and the 2008 crash are examples of these hard times, a cost of capitalism.
What are recessions?
The short-term ups and downs of economic activity, including expansion and recession, are called these.
What are business cycles?
An economist says to walk out of a $20 movie you hate because the $20 is already spent. That money is this type of cost.
What is a sunk cost?
Consumers and businesses make decisions through prices, competition, and markets in this type of economy.
What is a market economy?
When lords fenced off common lands for private sheep pastures, peasants were pushed into cities. This movement is named for the fencing.
What is the Enclosure Movement?
When one company dominates a market, it is called this, one of capitalism’s tendencies.
What is a monopoly?
A rise in gasoline prices was labeled this type of economics because it affects both a household’s budget and the whole economy.
What is both micro and macro?
In a town with 100 houses for 100 families, where ten people own them all, the real problem may be this rather than scarcity.
What is inequality (how resources are distributed)?
Free public education and health and safety rules for restaurants are government roles that make the U.S. this type of economy.
What is a mixed economy?
Along with railroads, steamships, and the telegraph, this shipping innovation, added with extra exclamation points, connected global markets.
What is containerization?
The Federal Reserve raises interest rates to slow this, a general rise in prices that lowers the purchasing value of money over time.
What is inflation?