Monday, January 29, 2007

Okay, I lied...

one more.

Here are some links that might help you. The guy who wrote these has taught AP econ for many years and put these together for his students. If they help, terrific. If not, ignore. :)
They are animated gifs, so you have to have the ability to view those.

http://www.reffonomics.com/opportunitycost.html

http://www.reffonomics.com/pp1.html (PPC's - animated)

http://www.reffonomics.com/economicsystems.html (economic systems)

http://www.reffonomics.com/terms.html (terms)

Okay - now I'm really going home.

KM

9 comments:

champion said...

I'm still a little confused about comparative / absolute advantage. (Sorry, I know we pretty much talked this one to death today). So my question is true or false:

If Jane is better off OVERALL at, say, gardening and fishing, than Joe, and you want to see who has the comparative advantage of fishing, it would be Jane, leaving Joe to have the comparative advantage of gardening. Right?! I guess what I'm getting at is, if you want to see whether Jane has the comparative advantage of gardening or fishing, you pick the one she can do in the least amount of time, right? And the other one is Joe's by default?

GOD! I'm so over this!! haha I need to take a break from thinking...

KM said...

You need numbers, Beth. It's impossible to determine comparative advantage (CA) without numbers.

Think of it like this: You are describing absolute advantage (AA). Whatever any person can do (faster, cheaper, better) than another, they have absolute advantage in. So, if Jane can do both of them better than Joe, she has absolute advantage in it.

To determine CA, you have to know what each can do in terms of numbers. So, it's impossible to determine your T/F question. CA takes opp cost into account - what do they give up, if they can only do one of them? So, from the examples in class - for the one about doing dishes or vacuuming (this is a stretch, I'm back in my office and don't have the sheets here). If the guy (Mike?) can do one room of vacumming in an hour, but two loads of dishes in that same hour, you must compare that to what the other person is able to do. Compare = comparative adv.

Then, determine who has the largest OC. Who will lose out more if they give one of the items up? That will give you who has CA in any given situation.

So...you can't just pick one arbitrarily. Sorry. :(

KM said...

Random comment...why would you bluff on a 9-2 hand when the flop shows nothing?

No, it's not a secret econ question. I just don't get it.

But hey...that's why I teach econ and I'm not at the World Series of Poker. :)

KM

rusch said...

okay i have a question about one of the previous pages from our packet. on page 7 (dealing with scarcity, OC, and PPC) it says that "scarcity necessitates choice"
how so? if things are scarce wouldn't it leave us with fewer choices?

(oh and this counts for this weeks post right? just making sure :))

KM said...

Ha! This weeks', last weeks...okay.

Because things are scarce, you have to make choices on what you will get. Money is scarce, too - you only have so much. So, I have $25 to my name until payday, and I have groceries to get, gas to put in the car, and a nice sale at Bath & Body Works. What do I do?

We have to make choices. :)

kfbare said...

Just a guess... but are you(Mrs. McDaniel) a big poker player?
You've had a couple references to poker so i was just wondering...

rusch said...

okay when you put it like that it makes sense. in the pack it made it seem like when things are scarce you have more to choose from. but now i understand what it meant. thanks for clarifying :)

ianr said...

the online quizzes... they can be taken at any time during the semester, correct? then there will be a prompt for me to send you my scores after i take it on the site?

KM said...

Online quizzes have due dates - they're on that sheet. All the online quizzes for unit one had to be in by Monday morning.

Try again with unit 2.

Love poker. Not good at bluffing, though - it's hard for me to keep a straight face. I'm killer online, though. :)

KM