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MARGINAL FACTOR COST AND AVERAGE FACTOR COST: The relation between marginal factor cost and average factor cost is comparable to other average-marginal relations found in the study of economics. For a firm that hires factors in a perfectly competitive factor market, marginal factor cost and average factor cost are equal, and equal to the factor market price. All three are represented by a horizontal, or perfectly elastic, curve equal to the factor market price. For a firm that hires factors in an imperfectly competitive factor market, especially monopsony, marginal factor cost is greater than both average factor cost and the factor market price.

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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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    AUTONOMOUS EXPORTS

    Exports to the foreign sector that do not depend on domestic income or production (especially national income or gross domestic product). Exports depend on foreign income or production, but not on domestic income or production. While other expenditures have both autonomous and induced components, exports are exclusively autonomous. Autonomous exports are a key part of the autonomous part of net exports. Induced net exports are due to induced imports.

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    APLS

    YELLOW CHIPPEROON
    [What's This?]

    Today, you are likely to spend a great deal of time searching the newspaper want ads hoping to buy either a bookshelf that will fit in your closet or a birthday greeting card for your grandfather. Be on the lookout for broken fingernail clippers.
    Your Complete Scope

    This isn't me! What am I?

    There were no banks in colonial America before the U.S. Revolutionary War. Anyone seeking a loan did so from another individual.
    "Nobody can be successful unless he loves his work. "

    -- David Sarnoff, TV pioneer

    JEH
    Journal of Economic History
    A PEDestrian's Guide
    Xtra Credit
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