Freshman Economics

Cigarette smoking has been proven to be risky regarding one's health, but it also has economic implications.  With regards to cigarettes, how have resources and scarcity been impacted?  What are the intended and unintended consequences of production, consumption and distribution of cigarettes?  Consider supply and demand in the market.  What are the equilibrium price and quantities, how they may have changed, and how government has intervened through heavy taxation? 

Amazon.com is a renown business in the Seattle area.  Do a little research to get some information on how it planned in the long-run and operates in the short-run.  Consider its fixed inputs.  Discuss the choices it has made in placing capital and creating economies of scale.  Consider its diminishing returns to variable inputs and how it effect the marginal cost of it services.  Discuss your ideas on marginal physical product and marginal cost of producing in the short-run. 

1. What are the elements involved in decision-making?
2. Why do constraints cause costs?
3. How do we draw a model to illustrate constraints?
4. What is opportunity cost?
5. What does economics mean when it uses the word marginal?
6. How does the model in 3 above illustrate marginal benefits and marginal costs?
7. Why is an objective function important in decision-making?
8. Who has a clear objective function and who does not?

1. Why does scarcity exist?
2. What is the input and what is the output of an economy?
3. How are production, consumption and distribution part of an economy?
4. What are the four resources?
5. What is the definition of capital, and what is the definition of entrepreneurship?
6. What is the principle of comparative advantage?
7. What is technical efficiency?
8. How does economic efficiency extend the definition of efficiency beyond technical efficiency?
9. Why is equity a goal for the economy, yet it is difficult to define?

1. How is opportunity cost defined?
2. Why is marginal cost also opportunity cost?
3. When the price increases on a particlular product in a market, how does the opportunity cost of not selling at that price change?
4. Why is it erroneous to argue that a firm is gouging when price rises due to higher demand?
5. How does price represent opportunity cost to a consumer?
6. What is sunk cost, and what are some examples of sunk cost?
7. Why should decisions be based upon expected costs?

1. Why are constraints not absolute in the long-run?
2. Why do constraints cause costs?
3. What are several kinds of incentives?
4. How does the profit incentive work to overcome constraints?
5. What are the intended consequences of entrepreneurs seeking profits?
6. What are the unintended consequences of entrepreneurs seeking profits?

1. How do both buyer and seller become wealthier through trading in markets?
2. What is meant by voluntary cooperation?
3. How does price affect the quantity demanded for a product?
4. How does the principle of marginal utility explain quantity demanded?
5. How does price affect the quantity supplied for a product?
6. How does the principle of opportunity cost explain quantity supplied?
7. What happens with respect to rationing when a market finds its equilibrium price?
8. What occurs if a market is not in equilibrium?

1. How does economic analysis trace the effects from a decision?
2. What is meant by intended consequences?
3. What is meant by unintended consequences?
4. Why is it important to distinguish how groups are impacted from a decision?
5. Why do you suppose that advocates of a decision often ignore all the consequences?

1. How is a demand curve drawn?
2. How is a supply curve drawn?
3. How is equilibrium illustrated with the supply and demand model?
4. What is a surplus, how is it illustrated with the supply and demand model, and why would it not sustain itself in a competitive market?
5. What is a shortage, how is it illustrated with the supply and demand model, and why would it not sustain itself in a competitive market?
6. How could a price ceiling lead to an alternative rationing mechanism?

1. How are wages determined in competitive markets?
2. Why do labor supply curves increase with wage and the quantity of labor?
3. Why do labor demand curves show a negative relationship between wage and the quantity of labor?
4.  Why do wages vary among occupations?

1. What happens when the opportunity cost of supplying labor decreases?
2. What is derived demand?
3. What happens to a labor market when the demand for a produced product declines?
4. How do you use supply and demand to explain why business accountants generally earn more than professors of accounting?

1. How do you illustrate total revenue on a demand curve?
2. When price falls, how do you show how total revenue has changed?  What is less and what is more?
3. How is marginal revenue defined in words?
4. How is marginal revenue calculated as a formula?
5. Why is price greater than marginal revenue at the same quantity (hint: consider less and more)?

1. What is the difference between the words elastic and inelastic?
2. What are the visual representations of perfectly elastic and perfectly inelastic demand curves?
3. How do the percentage change in quantities compare to the percentage change in price for elastic, unitary elastic and inelastic demand?
4. What is the formula for price elasticity of demand?
5. Why is price elasticity expressed as a positive number?
6. What is the numerical value of unitary elasticity; what is the type of elasticity with values less, and what is the type of elasticity with values greater than unitary elasticity?
7. What is the significance when a product that has a greater price elasticity than another product?
8. How do you predict the percentage change in quantity when you know price elasticity and the percentage change in price?
9. What happens to total revenue and how is it illustrated when price falls with elastic demand?
10. What happens to total revenue and how is it illustrated when price falls with inelastic demand?
11. What are the three major determinants of price elasticity, and how do they explain both elastic and inelastic demand?

1. What is the difference between the long-run and short-run with respect to decision-making by the firm?
2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of bigness?
3. What is meant by economies of scale and diseconomies of scale?
4. What is the shape of the long-run planning curve?
5. Why is the present value of a future payment discounted?
6. What is the formula for the present value of a payment received one year in the future?
7. How does the formula above change for two, three or more years in the future?
8. If investment in capital and the gains in the future are estimated, then, in concept, what is the rate of return?
9. What happens to the rate of return when the gains in the future are higher than anticipated?
10. What is the formula for the rate of return for an investment with a gain one year in the future?
11. Why must the rate of return be compared to the interest rate?

1. How does output deviate from its long-run plan?
2. Why do only variable inputs change output in the short-run?
3. How does short-run average total cost vary from the long-run plan?
4. How is 3 above illustrated with the long-run planning curve?
5. Why can someone not grow the world’s supply of corn in a flower pot?
6. How is a production function illustrated?
7. What are increasing returns?
8. What are diminishing returns?
9. What causes diminishing returns?
10. What are negative returns?
11.  Considering diminishing returns - what happens to the change in quantity as more variable input is applied in the production process?
12. What is the formula for marginal physical product, and what does marginal physical product indicate?
13. Why is marginal physical product an important descriptor of decision-making in production?
14. How is the marginal physical product curve drawn, what are the three regions, and how does it relate to the production function?

1. What is the difference between fixed and variable inputs?
2. What is the relationship among total costs, total fixed costs and total variable costs?
3. For any input, what is the price of the input times the number of inputs?
4. What is the shape of the variable cost curve attributed to?
5. Why do fixed costs not change with output in the short-run?
6. Why do total costs increase at a faster and faster rate in the short-run?

1. Why when marginal cost equals marginal revenue is the perfectly competitive firm maximizing profit?
2. When demand increases for the perfectly competitive firm, what happens to optimal output and profit?
3. If the perfectly competitive firm is earning normal profits and demand decreases, what happens to profit and how is this situation illustrated?
4. What is the shutdown point for a perfectly competitive firm and how is it illustrated?
5. Why is a perfectly competitive firm's supply curve the same as its marginal cost curve from the shutdown point upward?
6. What are the sequence of events from short-run to long-run, when the typical perfectly competitive firm is earning a normal profit but the market demand increases?
7. How is the situation above illustrated with a graphical model?
8. What are the sequence of events from short-run to long-run, when the typical perfectly competitive firm is earning a normal profit but the market demand decreases?
9. How is the situation above illustrated with a graphical model?

1. What are the four market structures, and which ones are more common in the real world?
2. Considering the number of competitors, which market structure has largest amount, many, few and only one?
3. Which imperfectly competitive market structure is primarily attributed to product variation?
4. Which imperfectly competitive market structure is primarily attributed to barriers to entry?
5. Which market structure finds firms as price takers?  Why?
6. Which market structure is the most effective price setter?  Why?
7. What are some examples of each market structure?

1. What is a normal profit, and what is an economic profit?
2. Why is accounting profit not necessarily consistent with the economic perspective?
3. When a P/E ratio is high (or low) what may it indicate?

1. How is perfect competition defined?
2. Why is the firm’s demand curve perfectly elastic in perfect competition?
3. How does the graphical model for perfect competition differ from monopoly?
4. Why are the marginal revenue and the demand curves the same for a perfectly competitive firm?
5. How is optimal output illustrated for the perfectly competitive firm?
6. Comparing price and quantity in the market, how does perfect competition differ from monopoly?

1. How is monopolistic competition defined?
2. What are the two forms of imperfect competition and how may they be empirically determined?
3. How does an imperfectly competitive firm’s demand curve differ from monopoly and perfect competition?
4. How do monopolistic competitive firms create their own demand curves?
5. How is the model for a monopolistic competitive firm drawn?
6. What happens in the short-run to profitability of monopolistic competitive firm when demand changes for the positive?
7. How do you illustrate the above?
8. What happens in the long-run to profitability of monopolistic competitive firm when demand changes for the negative?
9. How do you illustrate the above?
10. What similarities does monopolistic competition have with both monopoly and perfect competition?

1. How is breakeven defined?
2. Why are losses unacceptable in the long-run but not the short-run?
3. What costs are most likely not to be paid when a loss occurs?
4. When would a firm shutdown in the short-run?
5. What is the profit maximizing rule?
6. Why are profits not maximized where the gap between marginal revenue and marginal cost is the greatest?
7. What happens to marginal revenue and marginal cost when price is reduced lower than the profit maximizing price?
8. Why is cost minimization not necessarily profit maximization, and why is revenue maximization not necessarily profit maximization?
9. Are your able to draw the model of the firm that shows optimal output and price?

1. How is oligopoly defined?
2. What is collusion and what is mutual interdependence?
3. How do economies of scale, contestable markets and demand help keep prices lower than otherwise for oligopolies?
4. Besides it is illegal, why would oligopolistic firms find it difficult to cooperate with each other in controlling price?
5. What similarities does oligopoly have with both monopoly and perfect competition?

1. How does imperfect information create imperfect markets?
2. What is price discrimination, and what are some examples?

Things They Carried Alteration

Twenty years. A lot like yesterday, a lot like never. In a way, maybe, I'd gone under with Kiowa, and now after two decades I'd finally worked my way out. A hot afternoon, a bright August sun, and the war was over (page 187 of the 2000 edition).

Twenty years. A lot like yesterday, a lot like never. In a way, maybe, I'd gone under with Kiowa, and now after two decades I'd mostly worked my way out. A hot afternoon, a bright August sun, and the war was over (page 187 of the 2000 edition).

1. Why do you think Tim O'Brien changed the word "finally" to "mostly"? What does his changing that one word imply about the lasting effects of war and the fragile nature of identity? Identify one other passage from the novel, The Things They Carried, that illustrates this and explain why you chose that passage.
2. Referring to one or more of the poem(s) by Brian Turner, Marvin Bell, and Scott Hightower, discuss the author(s) treatment of war's lasting effects in their poem(s). What are the similarities and differences in terms of the language and the content?

Philosophy Essay Questions on Greek Philosophy

Answer these questions...

** First Question **

1- 'Seeking an underlying principle'...
A distinctive feature of early Greek philosophy, as well as subsequent philosophic inquiry, is the idea that by human reason we can elicit a basic "stuff," or notion which provides the foundation for all reality. Various early philosophers proposed different notions for this basic stuff, from Thales claiming it was water, to Heraclitus claiming it was the logos, to Pythagoras claiming it was number. How does such an inquiry differ from a religious approach, and why?


** Second Question**

2- 'Change and Stability'....
It may be said that one of the central notions in early philosophy was to understand not only what was permanent behind the change in the world, but also how to understand that change. This led to notions such as "you cannot step in the same river twice by Heraclitus, or that change was illusion affirmed by Parmenides. How might we understand this tension between change and stability?


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