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OLIGOPOLISTIC BEHAVIOR: Oligopolistic industries are nothing if not diverse. Some sell identical products, others differentiated products. Some have three or four firms of nearly equal size, others have one large dominate firm (a clear industry leader) and a handful of smaller firms (that follow the leader). Whatever products they may sell, and however they may be organized, oligopolistic industries share several behavioral tendencies, including (1) interdependence, (2) rigid prices, (3) nonprice competition, (4) mergers, and (5) collusion. In other words, each oligopolistic firm keeps a close eye on the decisions made by other firms in the industry (interdependence), are reluctant to change prices (rigid prices), but instead try to attract the competitors customers using incentives other than prices (nonprice competition), and when they get tired of competing with their competitors they are inclined to cooperate either legally (mergers) or illegally (collusion).

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Lesson Contents
Unit 1: The Concept
  • A Definition
  • So What?
  • Unit 1 Summary
  • Unit 2: Resources
  • Factors
  • Working Together
  • Free or Scarce?
  • Comparisons
  • Unit 2 Summary
  • Unit 3: Opportunity Cost
  • The Concept
  • Economic Cost
  • Unit 3 Summary
  • Unit 4: College Cost
  • Out of Pocket
  • What Else?
  • Unit 4 Summary
  • Unit 5: THE Problem
  • No Free Lunch
  • Solutions?
  • Unit 5 Summary
  • Course Home
    Scarcity

    In this lesson you'll see why scarcity tends to make economists grumpy. You'll see that scarcity is a perpetual condition that exists because people have unlimited wants and needs, but limited resources used to satisfy these wants and needs. You'll also see how this scarcity problem underlies the common notion of cost, which is integral to the study of economics. The five units contained in this lesson provide a tour through the economic problem of scarcity.

    • The first unit examines the fundamental concept of scarcity -- the combination of limited resources and unlimited wants and needs -- that is virtually synonymous with the study of economics.
    • The second unit discusses the four basic categories of limited resources --labor, capital, land, and entrepreneurship -- that produce the goods that are used to satisfy unlimited wants and needs.
    • In the third unit, we take a look at the notion of opportunity cost and see how it is related to the scarcity problem.
    • We then turn out attention in the fourth unit to a simple example of the explicit and implicit costs of attending college.
    • The fifth and final unit in this lesson then ponders why scarcity is considered THE economic problem and providing a little insight into why economists are grump.

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    LEAKAGES LINE

    A graphical representation of the relation between the level of aggregate production and one or more leakages. The three leakages (non-consumption uses of the income generated from aggregate production) are saving, taxes, and imports. The leakages line sequentially adds, or layers, each of these three uses of income depending on the number of sectors used in the analysis (two, three, or four). The slope of the leakages line depends on which if any of the uses of income are induced by aggregate production. The leakages line is combined with the injections line (containing investment expenditures, government purchases, and exports) in the Keynesian injections-leakages model.

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    APLS

    BLACK DISMALAPOD
    [What's This?]

    Today, you are likely to spend a great deal of time going from convenience store to convenience store wanting to buy either a wall poster commemorating the 2000 Olympics or a flower arrangement with a lot of roses for your grandmother. Be on the lookout for spoiled cheese hiding under your bed hatching conspiracies against humanity.
    Your Complete Scope

    This isn't me! What am I?

    The New York Stock Exchange was established by a group of investors in New York City in 1817 under a buttonwood tree at the end of a little road named Wall Street.
    "To sit back and let fate play its hand out, and never influence it, is not the way man was meant to operate."

    -- John Glenn, astronaut, U.S. senator

    UNCTAD
    United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
    A PEDestrian's Guide
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