... pound of potatoes costs the rancher 8 pounds of meat,
1 pound of meat costs the rancher 1/8 pound of potatoes. Similarly, because 1
pound of potatoes costs the farmer 1/2 pound of meat, 1 pound of ... opportunity
cost of producing 1 pound of meat is 2 pounds of
potatoes. Explain why the rancher’s opportunity cost of
producing 1 pound of meat is 1/8 pound of potatoes.
2. Maria can read 20 pages of economics ... The rancher buys 1
pound of potatoes for a price of 3 pounds of meat. This price of potatoes is lower
than her opportunity cost of 1 pound of potatoes, which is 8 pounds of meat. Thus,
the rancher...
... quantity of ice cream you are willing to produce
and offer for sale? Here are some possible answers.
Price
The price of ice cream is one determinant of the quantity supplied. When
the price of ice ... MARKET FORCES OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND 77
MARKET SUPPLY VERSUS INDIVIDUAL SUPPLY
Just as market demand is the sum of the demands of all buyers, market supply is
the sum of the supplies of all sellers. ... the price of the good. This
relationship between price and quantity supplied is called the law of supply:
Other things equal, when the price of a good rises, the quantity supplied of the
good...
... responsiveness of
quantity demanded or quantity
supplied to one of its determinants
price elasticity of demand
a measure of how much the quantity
demanded of a good responds to a
change in the price of that ... about 80 percent
of the nation’s oranges eaten as fruit,
and 90 percent of lemons, and whole-
salers said the retail prices of oranges
could triple in the next few days. The
price of lemons was ... price of flour or a fall in
the price of milk? Illustrate and explain your
answer.
b. Suppose instead that the equilibrium price of
cream cheese has risen but the equilibrium quantity
of bagels...
... THE
P
RICE
E
LASTICITY OF
S
UPPLY
C
AN
V
ARY
. Because
firms often have a maximum
capacity for production, the
elasticity of supply may be very
high at low levels of quantity
supplied and very low at high
levels of ... Concepts
1. Define the price elasticity of demand and the income
elasticity of demand.
2. List and explain some of the determinants of the price
elasticity of demand.
3. If the elasticity is greater ... reducing the supply of farm products may raise the in-
comes of farmers, but it does so at the expense of consumers.
WHY DID OPEC FAIL TO KEEP THE PRICE OF OIL HIGH?
Many of the most disruptive...
... Second, debt financing of wars shifts part of the cost of wars to fu-
ture generations, who will have to pay off the government debt. This is argu-
ably a fair distribution of the burden, for future ... THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM 577
size of the changes to the $20 billion of extra
government borrowing.
c. How does the elasticity of supply of loanable
funds affect the size of these changes? (Hint: See
Chapter ... source
of the supply of loanable funds—is composed of private saving and public saving.
A change in the government budget deficit represents a change in public saving
and, thereby, in the supply of...
... Citizens of the east
WICKED WITCH OF THE EAST: Grover Cleveland
WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST: William McKinley
WIZARD: Marcus Alonzo Hanna, chairman of the
Republican party
OZ: Abbreviation for ounce of ... job of the Bureau of Stan-
dards—to ensure the reliability of a commonly used unit of measurement. When
the Fed increases the money supply and creates inflation, it erodes the real value
of the ... example of how inflation discourages saving is the tax treatment of capital
gains—the profits made by selling an asset for more than its purchase price. Sup-
pose that in 1980 you used some of your...
... many of the tools we have developed in pre-
vious chapters, but we have to abandon the classical dichotomy and the neutrality
of money.
THE BASIC MODEL OF ECONOMIC FLUCTUATIONS
Our model of short-run ... is
that the supply of specific goods and services depends on relative prices—the prices
of those goods and services compared to other prices in the economy. For example,
when the price of ice cream ... utilization of its labor force. In other words, when
real GDP declines, the rate of unemployment rises. This fact is hardly surprising:
When firms choose to produce a smaller quantity of goods and...
... market of
500,000 potential readers. It is a matter of simple arithmetic to solve Readalot’s
problem. At a price of $30, Readalot sells 100,000 copies, has revenue of $3 million,
and makes profit of ... makes profit of $1 million. At a price of $5, it sells 500,000 copies, has revenue
of $2.5 million, and makes profit of $500,000. Thus, Readalot maximizes profit by
charging $30 and forgoing the ... costs of production. Pri-
vate owners have an incentive to minimize costs as long as they reap part of the
benefit in the form of higher profit. If the firm’s managers are doing a bad job of
keeping...
... to offer a downward-sloping one? Shouldn’t the findings of
Phillips, Samuelson, and Solow lead us to reject the classical conclusion of mone-
tary neutrality?
Quantity
of Output
Natural rate
of ... Department of Labor;
U.S. Department of Commerce.
CHAPTER 33 THE SHORT-RUN TRADEOFF BETWEEN INFLATION AND UNEMPLOYMENT 767
growth or decline in nominal national income, the rate of growth of the ... quantity
of money. It cannot use its control over nominal quantities to peg a real
quantity—the real rate of interest, the rate of unemployment, the level of real
national income, the real quantity of...
... three-fourths of it in the form of
wages and fringe benefits. The rest went to landowners and to the owners of capi-
tal—the economy’s stock of equipment and structures—in the form of rent, profit,
and ... between the quantity
of inputs used to make a good and
the quantity of output of that good
marginal product
of labor
the increase in the amount of output
from an additional unit of labor
... product of
that input multiplied by the market price of the output. The fourth column in Ta-
ble 18-1 shows the value of the marginal product of labor in our example, assum-
ing the price of apples...