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BALANCED BUDGET: An equality between the revenues and expenditures that constitute a budget. The notion of a budget is most important for governments, where revenues are taxes and expenditures are assorted public goods, administrative expenses, etc. While the federal government has been notorious for its failure to maintain a balanced budget, except for periods of unexpected prosperity, many state and local governments are very good at this sort of thing.

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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. 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, A Big Problem, 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, Resources, discusses the four basic categories of limited resources -- labor, capital, land, and entrepreneurship -- which produce the goods that are used to satisfy unlimited wants and needs.
    • In the third unit, Opportunity Cost, 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, College Cost, to a simple example of the explicit and implicit costs of attending college.
    • The fifth and final unit, THE Big Problem, in this lesson then ponders why scarcity is considered THE economic problem and provides a little insight into why economists are grumpy.

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    AVERAGE REVENUE PRODUCT

    Total revenue generated per unit of a variable input, keeping all other inputs unchanged. Average revenue product, usually abbreviated ARP, is found by dividing total revenue by the variable input or by multiplying average physical product by average revenue. Average revenue product is a part of marginal productivity theory used to analyze the demand for productive inputs.

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    BLUE PLACIDOLA
    [What's This?]

    Today, you are likely to spend a great deal of time at an auction wanting to buy either several orange mixing bowls or clothing for your pet dog. Be on the lookout for rusty deck screws.
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    Post WWI induced hyperinflation in German in the early 1900s raised prices by 726 million times from 1918 to 1923.
    "Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus."

    -- Alexander Graham Bell, inventor

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