notes - introduction to economics

INTRODUCTION TO ECONOMICS
1.1 Definitions
Specialization
• Populations were fairly limited until the agricultural revolution and hunter gatherers were forced to do everything for themselves.
• Once agriculture developed people were able to specialize in the things they were best at doing, productivity increased dramatically.
• This created a surplus which could be traded for goods produced by people who had specialized in other areas.

Trade
• Trading occurred in markets where people could buy things more cheaply than they could make them.
• Originally, goods were traded through barter, but this required a simultaneity of desire: you had to find someone who had what you wanted and at the same time they had to want what you had to offer.
• Time was wasted trying to find satisfactory exchanges, and money was invented which eliminated the inconvenience of barter.
o This release of wasted time led to a further increase in the surplus.

Industrialization
• The industrial revolution introduced machinery allowing further specialization:
o Division of labour: workers specialized at tasks increasing productivity.
o Economies of scale: gains from bulk buying, large scale financing, and the use of large scale machinery permitted even further gains in productivity.

• We moved from labour intense production which uses relatively large amounts of labour compared to other factors, to capital intense production where relatively large amounts of capital are used compared to other factors.
• Resequencing: there are many ways to fabricate the parts for a product, and many different ways of assembling it. By altering the sequence of actions, a firm can find the most efficient way to fabricate parts and assemble them into a final product creating further gains in productivity and reductions in cost.

Economic Sectors
• The primary sector involves the extraction of resources: farming, fishing, forestry and mining.
• The secondary sector involves the conversion of natural resources into goods: manufacturing and construction.
• The tertiary sector involves the production of services: finance and tourism
• In the private sector resources are owned by private individuals
o Consumers are grouped into households which own the resources and decide what to buy and in what quantities
 Rather than specialize on their own, most people sell their labour services to a firm and receive money wages in return.
 They also sell the services of other factors to firms in return for income.

• Producers expect to cover their costs with the revenue they obtain from selling:
o Profit maximization is essential otherwise the firm falls behind or is bought up by another firm which will force the first firm to maximize profits.
o Firms are the principle users of factors of production, they account for 85% of employment in most Industrialized countries (ICs).

• In the public sector production is in public hands: owned and controlled by the state which both buys and produces goods and services.
o We cannot assume that govts. always act in a consistent manner.
o Various govts. make laws, the courts interpret these laws and uphold them.

• Any govt. measures that impose large costs with few obvious benefits to the current generation are unlikely to be popular:
o Long run benefits are sometimes ignored: the planting of trees will only be enjoyed by future generations which do not have a vote today, therefore govt. will not spend money on planting trees.
o There is uncertainty about the future: it is hard to make decisions today which may have long term consequences.

1.2 Positive versus Normative Concepts
• Positive economics is based on theories which can be tested by looking at past data.
• Positive statements concern what is, was or will be: assertions about the world
• Normative economics is based on opinion.
• Normative statements often include words such as ‘should’ or ought to’ and involve value judgements about what is good and what is bad.
• Normative statements are not testable: 'ought we to be more concerned about unemployment than about inflation?'
• In democracies normative statements are often settled by voting

1.3 Ceteris Paribus
• With all other factors or things remaining the same.
• This means that we change one parameter at a time and watch how it influences the variables.
o For example: if the government cuts income taxes in order to lead to an increase in personal income, we would like to see whether consumption rises.
o If we hold everything else constant, we expect that most people will spend more money when their income rises.
o However, if at the same time there was a jump in prices and interest rates, people might not spend more money. This is why it is so important to isolate one change from another. In real life, of course, that is usually not possible and we have to make adjustments.

1.4 Scarcity
Factors and Payments to Factors of Production
• Natural resources include all the resources we use such as land, trees, water, minerals.
o In Europe, rent is the income paid on natural resources such as land
o In North America, rent is what is paid to rent an apartment and payments for using natural resources are called natural resource costs or raw material costs.
o There is some controversy about how to include environmental resources such as clean air, clean water, quietness etc. When these are polluted there is a cost, how should that be included, and who should pay for it?

• Labour is simply the number of hours of work put in by a person.
o Wages: are the costs associated with using labour and are usually paid on an hourly basis.

• Capital is defined as physical plant, machinery, equipment and buildings. It is not the money that you invest in the stock market.
o Profit: this is the return on investment in capital equipment:
 We assume investments in capital equipment earn the opportunity cost rate of return (OCRR) in the market.
 Anything earned in excess of the OCRR is referred to as abnormal or super-normal profit or pure profit or economic profit.

• Entrepreneurship: it is estimated that 85% of small businesses go bankrupt during the first five years. And 85% of those that survive go bankrupt in the next five years. There is a great scarcity of good management talent in the world.
o Abnormal profit is defined as the amount earned in excess of normal profit and is calculated as the difference between what you receive for selling a good or service and the cost of producing it, including the effort you had to put into it and the OCRR you could expect to earn on the money invested in capital equipment.
o We refer to the amount received as total revenue, and the costs as total costs. Thus profit is equal to total revenue minus total cost.
o Most firms maximize profits by trying to increase revenues through better marketing, and decreasing costs through more efficient systems of production.
o If firms do not maximize profits, they will either not grow anymore because there are no profits to re-invest in the business, or they will be bought out by someone else who will then force the firm to profit maximize.

1.5 Choice
Utility
• Most people are assumed to be motivated by rational desires.
• Utility: most people derive enjoyment or utility from the goods and services they consume, and most understand that the first amount of enjoyment from consuming a good is often the highest.
o As more and more is consumed, the level of enjoyment starts to decrease. This is referred to as the concept of diminishing marginal utility. The marginal utility is the enjoyment received from the next unit of whatever is being consumed, and it diminishes as more is consumed.
o Most people try to maximize total utility or enjoyment by consuming more than one good: as the marginal utility from consuming one good starts to fall from consuming more, you switch to another good where the marginal utility is higher.
 For example, we do not just eat one food such as hamburger, we get more enjoyment from mixing it with other foods such as salad, potatoes and vegetables.

Opportunity Cost
• Opportunity cost: the cost of using a resource measured in terms of the sacrifice foregone in the next best alternative. When the best alternative is chosen from a range of alternatives the second best choice is the opportunity cost.

Free and Economic Goods
• Free goods involve no opportunity cost such as fresh air, but they become economic goods if opportunity costs are involved in such things as removing pollution from the air.
• Consumption goods are purchased by consumers and consist of perishable goods such as fresh food, semi-durable goods such as clothing, and durable goods such as cars.
• Capital goods also referred to as producer goods are simply capital used in the production of consumer goods.


Production Possibility Curves
• Point B on the PPF shows the maximum that can be produced with existing resources and technology, it is a point of productive efficiency.
• The negative slope of the PPF reflects basic scarcity
• The law of diminishing returns implies a convex PPF: as resources are transferred from one use to another, the increment in output becomes smaller, the opportunity cost larger.
o Resources are being released in the wrong combination
o The resources being released are less and less suited to the new use

• Point A inside the frontier is productively inefficient: more of one good could be produced without sacrificing any of the other:
o Under market systems it is called unemployment
o Under central planning it is called inefficiency.

• Point C can only be reached through:
o Trade
o The discovery of more resources
o Increased labour productivity from greater education and training
o Increased capital productivity from an increase in technological knowledge.

1.6 Rationing Systems
Basic Economic Questions
• Scarcity: although output is limited by the technology available, there may be enough resources to satisfy basic needs for most humans, but there will never be enough resources to satisfy all peoples wants and desires.
o What goods and services should be produced with the resources available?
o How can factors of production be used efficiently to produce what is chosen?
o For whom should these goods and services be produced?

• Factors of production include:
o Land or Natural Resources: not man made: land, minerals, wood, fish.
o Labour: human resources determined by population, age, skill and training.
o Capital: man made tools such as buildings, equipment, and machinery
o Entrepreneurship: undertake the risk of organizing and combining factors for production.

• In order to maximize welfare we must produce in the most efficient manner possible to get the most out of our limited resources: this will put us on the production possibility frontier. This point is defined when:
Marginal Social Benefit = Marginal Social Cost

• But how do we distribute production in such a way as to maximize utility for society as a whole?
o Marginal utility for rich people is low as they have the money to afford to buy everything: in a word they are bored from over consumption.
o Marginal utility for poor people is high because they have only limited income.
o The problem is:
 If income is distributed from the rich to the poor, there is less incentive for people to work; using a dictatorial command systems such as under communism was found to lead to great inefficiency and unfairness.
 Those who work hard in the market system are rewarded so efficiency is achieved, but many become losers and are marginalized.

• What is produced is largely determined by the needs and wants of people
• How it is produced depends on available resources and technology.
• For whom depends on how goods are distributed: by traditional systems, central planning (dictatorship) or the free market.

Traditional Economies
• Resources and production systems are owned by the community
• Production takes place using traditional technology
• Allocation is based on long established patterns of community sharing.
• The production possibility boundary tended to expand and contract slowly as population grew, there were climatic changes, and new tools were invented
• Advantages of traditional systems:
o Resources are protected and the systems have proven to be sustainable over long periods of time
o Losses and profits are shared by the whole community, peer pressure forces decision makers to be careful
• Disadvantages of traditional system: Growth is very slow

Central planning:
• Resources and production systems are owned by the central government which allows the govt. to determine what is produced, how and for whom.
• Enormous information is required due to centralized planning and control. Govt. planners must:
o Predict patterns of consumer demand
o Estimate technological possibilities and production capabilities
• Producers are motivated to underestimate their capability
• Advantages of central planning:
o The govt. can make the distribution of income more equal
o The govt. determines what goods are produced and can prevent production of socially undesirable goods.
o Initially higher growth rates for Russia and China would suggest that as a system of organizing economic activity, central planning is successful in the early stages of economic development
• Disadvantages of central planning:
o Requires large amounts of information: forecasting people’s desires is difficult and the lack of incentives have led to a number of problems:
 Decision makers do not experience profits and losses and are not strongly motivated to make the right decisions
 Incentives to falsify production information lead to poor production decisions and massive pollution,
 A reluctance to change with the market in forecasting demand:
 There are queues when there are shortages (quantity rationing), and stockpiles if there are surpluses.
o State owned enterprises are managed inefficiently.
o There is no incentive for individuals and firms to be innovative. With no profit motive goods are often of poor quality and choice is very limited.

Free market
• Resources and production systems are owned by individuals and the allocation of resources, what, how and for whom, is left to the forces of supply (production) and demand (consumers) operating in a relatively free market.
• Producers attempt to maximize profits, but if they are poor at predicting:
o They produce too much (surpluses) and will lose money.
o They underestimate (shortages), will miss the potential profit and a competitor will make the profit instead.
• Only those firms which can predict most closely what consumers will want will earn adequate money to stay in business.
• Advantages of free market:
o Resources are allocated by market forces and the price mechanism without govt. intervention.
o Profits provide an incentive to reduce costs and be innovative.
o The free market maximizes community surplus if there are no failures and imperfections.
• Disadvantages of the free market:
o Market failures and imperfections occur because of public goods, merit goods, externalities and lack of competitive markets.
o The system of profits and losses is thought to be unfair, substantial govt. intervention is needed to cope with income redistribution problems.
 The wealthy are taxed to reduce profits
 Those marginalized by the system, are supported with tax money
o The system is incapable of controlling pollution and producing sustainable growth, planning has been introduced to correct for this problem.

Mixed Economies
• Most countries in the world have moved gradually toward a mixture:
o Free markets are used to allocate resources to achieve efficiency.
o Government planning is used where markets fail to operate successfully, and to redistribute income to those who are marginalized by the market system.