Economic History
The study of how scarce resources are distributed among unlimited wants.
What is economics?
This is what you get when considering the cost of the next best alternative activity.
What is opportunity cost?
The amount of a good or service that people are willing and able to purchase over a range of prices.
What is demand?
On a supply and demand graph, a tariff shifts the consumer price upward and creates revenue for this group.
What is the government?
A product whose demand rises when income falls and falls when income rises.
What are inferior goods?
In what system were the serfs tied to the land and had to give half their output or production to the lords in exchange for protection.
What is the manorial system?
A leftward shift in the supply curve means that at every price, producers do this.
What is supply less?
When income rises and consumers buy more of a product, that product is called this.
What is a normal good?
A tax on imported goods, often used to raise their price and protect domestic industries.
What are tariffs?
When the price of hamburgers goes up and demand for buns goes down, hamburgers and buns are this type of good.
What are compliments?
The rise of the merchants who owned technology of production and took risks, the cutting off of serfs from the Lord's land, and the focal point changing from towns to cities marked the shift to this.
What is capitalism?
A hurricane destroys orange groves in Florida, reducing the number of oranges available at every price. This event is an example of this shift.
What is a decrease in suppy?
If the price of Coke rises and demand for Pepsi increases, Coke and Pepsi are considered this type of good.
What are substitutes?
These raise prices but don't benefit or provide revenue to the government.
What are quotas?
This point, where supply and demand intersect, is the only price where quantity demanded equals quantity supplied.
What is equilibrium?
In ancient Greek and Roman societies, towns and markets existed, but these economies were primarily based on this activity.
What is agriculture and self-sufficient?
This occurs when people produce more than they need for survival, allowing time for trade, innovation, and the rise of new social classes
What is surplus production?
Doctors publish research showing bananas help lower blood pressure, what part of the market for bananas will this affect and how will it affect it?
What is an increase in demand for bananas?
When tariffs raise the price of imports, consumers often turn to these, boosting their sales.
What are domestic substitutes?
If price is above equilibrium, the result is this condition in the market.
What is a surplus?
In Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith argued that this practice was the key to increasing national wealth.
What is division of labor?
In Guns, Germs, and Steel, societies with geographic advantages could domesticate plants and animals earlier. This surplus of food freed some people from farming, which led to these two key developments that gave certain societies long-term advantages.
What is specialization of labor and technological innovation?
In the labor market example of the Transcontinental Railroad, raising workers’ wages was necessary to help this condition (also explained as "the want of men").
What is a shortage of labor?
In a tariff diagram, these two groups clearly lose: one pays higher prices, while the other accepts lower profits on imports.
Who are consumers and foreign producers?
The price of the Owala water bottle increase from $30-$40, causing this to happen to the demand curve.
What is a moving up the demand curve?