General Concepts 2 min read
Turnpikes
In the UK, turnpikes were an increasingly common way of paying for the maintenance costs of major roads from the…
EXPLORE THE FIELD
Category: General Concepts.
Discover thoughtful articles, guides and ideas about this topic.
← Explore all topics General Concepts 4 min read
Quasi public goods
The market for quasi-public goods is an important example of an incomplete market. A quasi-public good is one that resembles…
General Concepts 1 min read
Incomplete markets
An incomplete market is one where some of the necessary conditions for market formation exist, but not all of them.…
General Concepts 3 min read
Pure public goods
The market mechanism is likely to fail to supply pure public goods because entrepreneurs are unlikely to enter the market,…
General Concepts 1 min read
Missing markets
A significant market failure is the failure to produce some goods and services, despite being needed or wanted. Markets can…
General Concepts 1 min read
Index numbers
Economists frequently use index numbers when making comparisons over time. An index starts in a given year, the base year, at…
General Concepts 1 min read
Marginal analysis
Economic decisions are taken in a marginal way, which means that decisions to produce, or consume, are made one at a time.…
General Concepts 1 min read
Increasing opportunity cost
Opportunity cost can be thought of in terms of how decisions to increase the production of an extra, marginal, unit…
General Concepts 2 min read
Pareto efficiency
Any point on a PPF, such as points ‘A’ and ‘B’, is said to be efficient and indicates that an…
General Concepts 1 min read
Interpreting PPFs
Firstly, we can describe the opportunity cost to Mythica of producing a given output of computers or textbooks. For example, If Mythica produces 3m…
General Concepts 1 min read
Production possibility frontiers
An opportunity cost will usually arise whenever an economic agent chooses between alternative ways of allocating scarce resources. The opportunity…
General Concepts 1 min read
Samuelson’s three questions
America’s first Nobel Prize winner for economics, the late Paul Samuelson, is often credited with providing the first clear and simple…