Economic Principles

Discussion & Essay Questions

What are some examples of scarce resources?
Which scarce resource do you think is the most valuable?
Think of a the last important decision you made about how to allocate your time. What were your opportunity costs? Did you make the right decision?
Imagine you are the governor of a state. You need to make a proposal for how to balance the budget. How do you manage the tradeoffs between equity and growth? What are examples of decisions will you need to make?
Imagine you are graduating college and a new start-up company offers you $32,000 in salary and 10,000 stock options priced at .01 per share. You have another offer for a job at an established company for $50,000 in cold hard cash. What are the advantages of each and the potential opportunity costs?
Should entrepreneurship be considered a factor of production? Why or why not?
Determine your production possibilities frontier for studying and being on Facebook. What is the opportunity cost of an hour of each?
Research the market share of Apple Computer over the last 20 years. How has their market share changed? Has their profitability changed as their market share changed?
Research the market share of General Motors since the 1950s. What changed?
Imagine you are the CEO of a corporation. You need to make a tradeoff decision between optimizing for market share and optimizing profitability. What factors might you consider?