Tasks and solutions “Basic economic concepts”. Opportunity Costs of Learning Direct and Indirect Costs

a) the salary that could be received by working instead of studying;

b) expenses for educational literature and stationery;

c) food expenses;

d) tuition fees.
19. A farmer can grow potatoes and wheat in his field. If he sows the whole field with potatoes, he will harvest 400 tons, and if he sows wheat, 100 tons. What is the opportunity cost of one ton of wheat:

a) the opportunity cost cannot be precisely determined, since it is not known how much wheat is sown, and how much potatoes;

b) 4 tons of potatoes;

c) 1/4 ton of potatoes;

d) the opportunity cost cannot be determined because prices are unknown.
20. You earn 200 rubles per day. On one of the days you decide to leave from the second half of the day for football, having paid 50 rubles for a ticket. Your costs are:

a) 100 rubles as income for half a day;

b) 50 rubles per ticket;

c) 150 rubles as the sum of income for half a day and the ticket price;

d) there are no opportunity costs.
21. On the production possibilities curve, the growth in production of one type of product is combined:

a) with a decrease in the production of another type of product;

b) with an increase in the production of another type of product;

c) with a constant volume of production of another type of product;

d) any of the above options is possible.

a) the maximum cost of production;

b) the average cost of producing a product;

c) the costs associated with the release of an additional unit of output;

d) the minimum cost of producing a product.

56. Total production costs are:

a) the costs associated with the use of all resources and services for the production of products;

b) explicit (external) costs;

c) implicit (internal) costs, including normal profit;

d) the costs of the commodity producer associated with the purchase of durable consumer goods.

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c) Francois Quesnay;

d) David Ricardo.

6. The problems studied by microeconomics include:

a) economic growth;

b) unemployment;

c) monopolistic competition;

d) public debt.
7. A macroeconomic indicator is not:

a) the price of the computer;

b) GDP growth rate;

c) the unemployment rate;

d) the price level.
8. The subject of macroeconomics is not:

a) state tax policy;

b) the rate of economic growth of the country;

c) the state budget deficit;

d) the level of wages of an individual worker.

9. The laws of supply and demand are studied as part of the course:

a) management;

b) microeconomics;

c) macroeconomics;

d) finance.

10. An economic school that expresses the interests of the commercial bourgeoisie of the era of primitive capital accumulation is:

a) mercantilism;

b) physiocracy;

c) marginalism;

d) Marxism.
11. The mental decomposition of phenomena into its component parts and the allocation of its individual aspects in order to identify the specific in them that distinguishes them from each other is:

a) an economic experiment;

b) analysis;

c) discounting;

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a) the minimum volume of output of products;

b) the maximum volume of output of products;

c) the best combinations of product output;

d) alternative combinations of goods for a given amount of resources.
13. For a person who has the opportunity to get a job with pay from 4,000 to 6,000 rubles per hour, the opportunity costs of one hour of leisure are equal, rubles per hour:

14. For students, the alternative value of studying at the university reflects:

a) the amount of the scholarship;

b) the maximum earnings that can be received by dropping out of school;

c) government spending on the education of an average specialist;

d) the costs of parents for the maintenance of the student.
15. Which of the following lists of factors of production is more accurate:

a) labor, land, capital, labor force, management;

b) labor, means of production, technology, entrepreneurship, management;

c) resources, technology, entrepreneurship;

d) labor, land, capital, entrepreneurship.

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a) the use of legal norms;

b) relations between people about things, goods;

c) the relationship of people to things, goods;

d) the relationship between the means and objects of labor.
17. What is behind the statement that every economic system faces the problem of limited resources:

a) there are times when some products can only be bought at high prices;

b) production resources are never enough to satisfy all human needs;

c) in any economy there are periods of recession when there is a shortage of something;

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a) actual possession of the object;

b) extracting useful properties from it;

c) all of the above are correct;

d) all of the above is wrong.
23. The economic system solves the following issues:

a) what, how, for whom and at what rate of growth;

b) what, how, for whom;

c) when, where, why;

d) what, where, for whom.

24. The criteria for distinguishing types of economic systems are:

a) the form of ownership of resources;

b) type of coordination mechanism;

c) the level of well-being of members of society;

d) Answers a and b are correct.
25. If economic problems are solved by both the market and the government, then the economy is:

a) market;

b) command;

c) mixed;

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a) investments;

b) consumption;

c) production;

d) limited resources.
27. Which of the following characteristics does not apply to a market economy:

a) private property;

b) central planning;

c) competition;

d) freedom of enterprise.
28. Problems of “what, how and for whom to produce” can be related to:

a) only to societies where central planning prevails;

b) only to a market economy;

c) to any society, regardless of its socio-economic and political organization;

d) only to totalitarian systems.

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a) between gross income and external costs;

b) between external and internal costs;

c) between gross income and total costs;

d) between total revenue and depreciation.
58. Variable costs include all of the following costs except:

a) wages;

b) the cost of raw materials and supplies;

c) depreciation;

d) electricity bills.
59. The cost of producing a unit of output is:

a) total costs

b) average costs;

c) external costs;

d) variable costs.
60. Internal costs include:

a) the cost of purchasing raw materials and materials for the production of products;

b) the cost of resources owned by the enterprise;

c) expenses associated with the acquisition of a land plot by an enterprise;

d) rent for the equipment used.
61. The purchase by an enterprise of raw materials from suppliers includes:

a) to external costs;

b) to internal costs;

c) to fixed costs;

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a) salary;

c) profit;

d) unemployment benefits.
94. GDP can be calculated as the sum of:

a) consumption, investment, government purchases and net exports;

b) consumption, transfer payments, wages and profits;

c) investments, wages, profits and the cost of intermediate goods;

d) the value of final goods, intermediate goods, transfer payments and rent.
95. The founder of macroeconomics as a science is:

a) J.M. Keynes;

b) A. Marshall;

c) A. Smith;

d) C. McConnell.
96. Potential GNP is:

a) the value of all goods and services produced in the economy from some base period to the present;

b) the value of all goods and services that can be produced if the economy operates at full employment of the labor force;

c) the value of all goods and services that can be produced if the economy operates at full employment of labor and capital;

d) the extent to which GNP can increase if the level of investment is maximized.
97. The classical model assumes that the aggregate supply curve (AS) will be:

a) horizontal at the price level determined by aggregate demand;

b) horizontal at the price level determined by the interest rate and government policy;

c) vertical at an arbitrary level of GNP;

d) vertical at the level of potential GNP.

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a) corporate income tax;

b) personal income tax;

c) payment for water, land tax;

d) VAT, excises, customs duties.
122. A pronounced anti-inflationary fiscal policy implies:

a) increasing the level of taxation and reducing government spending;

b) reduction in both tax revenues and government spending;

c) an increase in taxes and a higher level of government spending;

d) tax cuts and higher government spending.

opportunity cost

Under production costs it is customary to understand a group of expenses, cash expenditures necessary in order to create a product. That is, for enterprises (firms, companies), they act as payment for acquired production factors.

Such expenses cover the payment of materials necessary to ensure the production process (raw materials, electricity, fuel), wages of employees, depreciation, and expenses for ensuring production management.

When there are sales of goods, entrepreneurs receive revenue.

Some of the financial resources received are used to compensate for production costs (money for the production of the required amount of goods), the second part is to ensure profit, the main goal for which any production is started. This means that the cost of production will be less than the cost of the goods per volume of profit.

What is opportunity cost?

Most of the costs of production - from the use of resources that ensure this very production. When resources are applied in one place, they cannot be applied elsewhere, because they are rare and limited.

For example, the money that was spent to buy a blast furnace to produce pig iron cannot be used to make soda.

Result: if any resource is decided to be used in some way, then it cannot be spent in another way.

Given this particular circumstance, with any decision to start production, it becomes necessary to refuse to use a certain amount of resources in order to use this very resource in the manufacture of other products. Thus, opportunity costs are formed.

Opportunity cost of production is the cost of producing goods that are assessed in terms of opportunities lost when that same amount of resource could be used for another purpose.

Example:

To be able to understand how the opportunity cost is valued, one can consider a desert island with Robinson Crusoe. Corn and potatoes are two crops that he planted near his own hut.

His plot of land is very limited on all sides: one side is the ocean, the second side is the rocks, the third side is his hut, the fourth side is the rocks. He decides to increase the area allotted for corn.

He will be able to carry out this plan only when he reduces the area for planting potatoes.

The opportunity cost in the production of each future corn cob in this situation can be represented by potato tubers, which were not received by him subsequently using the potato land resource to increase the area under corn.

But in this example, it was only about two products. And what is the right thing to do when it comes to tens, hundreds, thousands of different products that are unlike each other? In such cases, money comes to the rescue, by which all possible goods are measured with each other.

What is included in the opportunity cost?

Opportunity costs of production can be the difference in profit, the opportunity for which arises when using the most profitable alternative uses of the resource, and the profit that was actually received by entrepreneurs.

But not all costs of producers fall under the concept of opportunity costs. When resources are used, costs incurred by manufacturers in an unconditional manner (for example, costs for registration, renting a room, etc.) will not be considered alternative. Therefore, non-alternative costs will not participate in the economic choice.

Main differences between implicit and explicit costs

Taking into account the economic point of view, the costs of an alternative nature are usually divided into two categories: explicit and implicit costs.

The first category, explicit costs, includes opportunity costs, the form of which is cash payments to suppliers for factors of production and intermediate products. These costs include:

• remuneration of workers (payment in cash for workers providing production);
• financial costs for making purchases or paying for the rent of special equipment for production, structures, buildings, in which the process of production of goods will take place (monetary payments in favor of capital suppliers);
• payment of transport costs;
• payment for utilities (water, electricity, gas);
• payment for the use of services of insurance companies and banking institutions;
• settlements with suppliers of resources of a material nature - raw materials, semi-finished products, components.

Implicit costs distinguish between costs of an exclusively alternative nature, arising from the use of resources owned by the organization itself (unpaid cost). They can be presented in the following forms:

1) In the form of cash payments that could be received in the case of the most profitable investment of resources at the disposal of the company. Lost profit, payment that could have been received by the owner in carrying out other work, interest on capital invested in various kinds of securities, rent payments for the use of land.

2) In the form of normal profit, as a minimum remuneration in favor of the entrepreneur in order to keep him in the chosen branch of business.

For example, an entrepreneur is engaged in the production of furniture, and will consider profit sufficient for himself, which is 15% of the total amount of capital invested in the production process.

When the production of furniture gives him a normal profit of less than 15%, he will change his line of business, transferring his capital to other industries that can provide a higher level of his profit.

3) For owners of capital - in the form of profit that could be received by them by investing their own resources not in this, but in any other business.

For land owners, the essence of implicit costs is the rent that could be received when renting out their plots.

For entrepreneurs (and those who conduct ordinary labor activities) - the implicit cost may be the payment that they could receive when working for other firms for the same period of time.

Thus, in production costs, Western economic theory also includes the income of entrepreneurs (Marx interprets this as the average return on invested capital).

Therefore, receiving this kind of income is considered as a payment for all possible risks, as a reward for the entrepreneur, an incentive for him to keep his financial assets without going beyond the established company, without diverting part of the resources to use them for other purposes.

Differences between economic and accounting costs

Production costs, including those with normal or average profit, constitute a set of costs that are of an economic nature.

Economic or opportunity costs in the modern economy are those that were carried out under conditions that allow making the best decision for the company in economic terms when using resources. They are considered the ideal that every company should strive to achieve.

Of course, in most cases, in reality, everything happens a little differently, because it can be very difficult, or almost impossible, to achieve any ideal.

It should be further noted that the costs of an economic nature are not equal to the concepts and values ​​included in the accounting data. The amount of profit received by entrepreneurs will not be included in the accounting costs.

Internal costs are directly related to those costs that arise when using part of your own product to further support the production process.

For example, about half of the grain harvest that was grown on the fields of the enterprise was used for sowing on the same land areas from which it had previously been collected.

Since this grain is the property of the company and is used for its own internal needs, payment will not be made.

Internal cost is directly related to the use of own product, which will be turned into resources to further support the production process in the company.

An external cost is the financial cost of obtaining the necessary amount of resources to maintain production, which are not owned by the owners of this firm.

The costs arising in the production process can be classified not only by taking into account the resources used - the resources of the company, or those that had to be paid. There are other classifications as well.

Alternative choice costs come from limited resources and virtually unlimited human needs. Only demand among consumers and the corresponding price lead to the correct use of limited resources.

The concept of “alternative choice costs” first appeared at the end of the 19th century, it was introduced into scientific circulation by Friedrich Wieser. The essence of the theory that he put forward is that, while producing some goods, we lose a lot of utility from other useful things that could be done using the same amount of resource.

A person cannot have everything he wants. Therefore, you have to make a choice based on the size of your income. In most cases, a person is inclined to choose the product, after the acquisition, which will receive maximum satisfaction.

To make a purchase of the selected product, a person must deny himself the purchase of other things. Those goods that have to be abandoned when making purchases of selected things are the imputed (hidden) costs of acquisition. When buying goods, in most cases some amount of money is given in return.

In practice, you have to give up the next desired things that you could buy, spend the same amount.

Businesses, like individuals, also have to make choices about how to spend their own money. For example, profits can be donated to charity, dividends can be paid to persons who own shares. Management must prioritize tasks and deal with them.

Opportunity costs: accounting and economic

Economically, costs reflect the relationship between the release of a particular product and indicators that affect the production process. If the organization uses its own resources, and not those acquired from other companies, it is more convenient to set the prices for the goods for the report in one monetary unit.

purpose of costing- calculation of the difference between the cost of the product and its price for the consumer. These calculations are based on costs during production and the technological cycle. Changes in the cost of resources and maintenance affect the minimum operating costs. Figure 1 shows the main types of costs.

Fig.1 - Production costs

Costs are categorized according to different criteria. Let's consider such types of production costs as alternative, economic and accounting.

What are accounting costs?

Accounting costs- financial expenses that the company spends on production needs. This category of costs is the company's payments to specific suppliers from outside.

Consider their classification (Fig. 2)

Fig. 2 - Classification of accounting production costs

Direct and indirect costs

The main categories of accounting costs are direct and indirect. The first type represents the costs for the direct manufacture of products, the second - the finances spent on the acquisition of funds and production resources. Without taking into account indirect costs, the settlement procedures, preparation of invoices and depreciation of the company are not feasible.

Accounting costs depreciate the fixed capital. Investments are always present in any economic branch. Their components: buildings and equipment required to produce products. This is the main capital.

Structures are exposed to external influences, therefore, a specific period (several tens of years) is used, as well as equipment (up to two years).

The accounting department of the company is obliged to take into account the depreciation of the components of fixed capital and take into account depreciation expenses among the costs.

What is economic cost?

Economic (time) costs- the total costs of business procedures performed by the firm in the course of the release of goods or the provision of services. For example, resources and raw materials not included in the market turnover.

Economic costs are:

• Internal. The cost of using the company's own resources in the production process.
• External. The cost of purchasing resources for an outsourced manufacturing process.
• permanent. Associated with factors of production that persist for a long time. They are formed as a result of the presence of technical devices at the company and are covered even if the latter are not used in production. Getting rid of such expenses by 100% is possible only with an absolute stoppage of the company, in this situation, fixed costs become sunk costs. For example, funds spent on advertising, rental of premises, depreciation. Such costs are present even if the profit of the firm is zero.
• Variables. Proportional to the volume of the manufactured product. The more goods are planned to be produced, the greater the costs are expected. For example, finance for the purchase of raw materials, energy, fuel resources, transport. The main percentage of variable costs falls on the purchase of materials and wages of workers.
• Total gross costs- the total cost for the entire period of production. Includes fixed and variable costs. The cost of producing a product, which is directly proportional to the increase in the volume of the latter. To find out if the enterprise is profitable, it is necessary to analyze all changes in costs, for which the change in variable and gross costs is compared with the gross limit.
• Limit- costs for unplanned units of goods or a deviation from the total costs taken into account with a quantitative increase in production. The value of marginal cost is inversely proportional to the dynamics of the amount of product produced.
• Medium is the total cost of each item produced. They are used, as a rule, in order to compare with the final price of the goods. To calculate this value, the total gross variable costs are divided by the amount of product produced. These costs are dependent on such parameters as payback, cost, market value and income.

Examples of calculating economic costs:

Assume that the cost calculation is carried out not by the accounting staff, but by the owner of the company. His task is to find out whether it is profitable for him to further engage in entrepreneurship in this area.

Here it is necessary to approach the costs already from an economic point of view.

Then not only real expenses are taken into account, but also the funds that the company did not receive by investing this capital and spending just such time.

For example, you are a lawyer by profession. You receive an offer to become a director of legal services in another organization, where you will work with the same efforts as in your company, but receive 12 thousand rubles.

At the same time, you take 10 thousand from the income of your business, invest them in a bank deposit and provide yourself with an annual income for this amount. That is, using this option, you will receive a total profit of 22 thousand, but by choosing to open your own company, you are missing this opportunity.

This amount will reflect your implicit costs. In order to calculate economic costs, add implicit costs to accounting: I (e) \u003d I (n) + I (b).

From a lot of calculations, it turns out that by using factors such as time and capital in the most beneficial way, that is, by choosing the best option for using resources, the entrepreneur will receive an income of 82 thousand rubles.

Is the head of his company satisfied with the work of his company, who receives an accounting profit of 20 thousand, and an economic one - minus 2 thousand? Naturally, no. In this case, resources were used incorrectly.

Economic costs in our lives

Economic costs are present every day in the life of any person when he has to make an economic choice.

For example, when choosing which transport (road, rail, air) you will use to get to another city, do not forget not only the explicit costs (ticket price), but also the implicit ones - the profit that you can earn during the move.

From this point of view, inexpensive transport is often the most costly. That is why entrepreneurs are trying to move from one locality to another in the fastest, not cheap ways.

Entering an educational institution, you need to take into account not only the tuition fees, but also the lost income that you lose by refusing to work in other activities.

The economic cost to the supplier of inputs is income. Paying them, the company excludes the possibility of alternative use of resources.

For example, your company employs a locksmith who knows Chinese well. But to raise his salary, based only on this, you will not.

However, if a Chinese competitor appears next to you, you will have to increase the income of this worker so that he does not change his place of work.

conclusions

So, let's conclude that if resources are misused, the firm "pays" with an economic loss.

What happens if you choose the right alternative investment opportunity for your funds? The amount of accounting profit will be the same as implicit costs, the income from the resources used will be the maximum, economic costs will begin to correspond to the company's profit.

In this case, economic profit tends to zero, but such an indicator should suit the owner of the company, because. he does not remain at a loss, having settled on this, and not on any alternative possibility.

Thus, zero economic profit is the norm and corresponds to the average income. Under what circumstances will the firm have an economic profit "in the black"? If it makes the most of the resources used according to the correctly conceived scenario.

A positive economic income is the result of the organizational talent of an entrepreneur, the “bonus” that he receives for using the latest technology and technology, and the correct management of the company.

Its part, which is more than accounting profit, is called excess profit. It depends on which area the main resources will be directed.

But with an increase in the amount of resources, the market supply also increases, which reduces the price of products, bringing economic profit back to zero.

(3

The object of economic analysis in each country is the scarcity (limitation, rarity) of resources and the alternative choice of their use.

Since resources are scarce, the economy cannot provide an unlimited supply of goods and services. Moreover, it is necessary to make decisions about what goods and services should be produced and which should be discarded.

In the vast majority of situations there are more than two choices. In such a situation, a rationally acting economic entity evaluates the benefits it receives from each alternative use of resources, and opts for the most beneficial alternative.

At the same time, he loses (loses) the benefit from a different (alternative) use of available resources. Therefore, the costs (costs) for obtaining the chosen good will be the highest benefit of the rejected options.

In other words, opportunity (opportunity) costs or selection price is the benefit from the best of the unrealized alternative possibilities.

Alternative (imputed) production costs is the cost of producing one good expressed as the quantity of another good that has to be abandoned in order to produce that good.

In other words, the economic cost of obtaining a certain good is other benefits that could be obtained with the same resources, but which will have to be abandoned if the choice is made in favor of this good. Therefore they are called opportunity cost or cost of missed opportunities.

For example, let's estimate the alternative costs of a student's education at a university. First of all, having paid for education, the student refuses to buy some goods (clothes, etc.). In addition, studies require time during which the student could earn money, just relax, etc. From all this he refuses, deciding to study. Therefore, the economic costs of training also include unearned money.

Thus, in order to estimate the full economic costs of obtaining a certain good, it is necessary to sum up all the losses (in the form of other benefits not received) that one has to bear in connection with this.

Accounting for opportunity costs in economic choice is the most important principle of microeconomic analysis.

On the transformation curve, we see that with each additional unit of one commodity, more and more other goods have to be sacrificed, i.e. opportunity costs increase.

What is reflected in h Acone of increasing imputed (opportunity) costs , which says: in conditions of limited and specific resources, opportunity costs steadily increase as the output of any of the alternative types of products increases. Those. under conditions of full use of resources and unchanged technology, for each additional unit of one commodity, an ever-increasing quantity of other goods must be abandoned.

The economic meaning of the law of increasing opportunity costs is as follows: economic resources are unsuitable for their full use in the production of alternative products.

Operation of the law an increase in opportunity (imputed) production costs is manifested in the fact that the production possibilities curve has convex shape.

When we try to increase the production of certain commodities, we have to switch from the production of other commodities resources less and less adapted for this kind of application. And this switching operation is getting deeper and more expensive.

There is a law closely related to the above - law of diminishing returns (productivity). It can be formulated as follows: a continuous increase in the use of one resource in combination with an unchanged amount of other resources at a certain stage leads to the cessation of the growth of returns from it, and then to its reduction.

This law is based again on the incomplete interchangeability of resources. After all, replacing one of them with another (others) is possible up to a certain limit. For example, if four resources: land, labor, entrepreneurial abilities, knowledge are left unchanged and such a resource as capital is increased (for example, the number of machines in a factory with a constant number of machine operators), then at a certain stage there comes a limit beyond which further growth the specified factor of production becomes less and less. The performance of a machine operator who maintains an increasing number of machines decreases, the percentage of scrap increases, machine downtime increases, etc.

Thus, the main economic problem is the choice of the most efficient variant of the distribution of factors of production in order to solve the problem of optimal opportunities, which is due to the unlimited needs of society and limited resources.

The problem of efficiency is the main problem of economic theory, which explores the best use or application of scarce resources in order to achieve the greatest or maximum possible satisfaction of the unlimited needs of society (the goal of production). Thus, economics is the science of efficiency, the efficient use of scarce resources.

Any production is effective , if with given resources it is impossible to increase the output of one good without reducing the output of another, therefore, any point lying on the production possibilities curve is efficient.

The distribution of resources, in which it is impossible to increase the output of one economic good without reducing the output of another, is called Pareto-efficient or Pareto-optimal (after the famous Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto).

Economic efficiency characterizes the relationship between the number of units of rare resources that are used in the production process and the amount of any product obtained as a result of this process, i.e. covers the problem "COSTS - OUTPUT" ().

1. Which of these provisions is not related to the definition of the subject of theoretical economics?
A) efficient use of resources;
C) unlimited production resources;
C) maximum satisfaction of needs;
D) material and spiritual needs;
E) the rarity of the good.

2. In which of the following cases does the study of theoretical economics have no practical value?
A) each person is influenced by the economy and influences it himself;
B) each person earns money using his knowledge and experience about certain areas of activity. Theoretical economics teaches students "how to live";
C) every person faces political problems, many of which are related to the economy;
D) everyone who understands the principles of the functioning of the economy is better able to solve their own economic problems.

3. Economic theory:
A) Suitable for studying all economic systems;
B) Suitable only for studying the capitalist economic system;
C) May not be useful in the study of economic relations inherent in socialism;
D) Answers B and C are correct;
E) Suitable for studying pre-industrial systems.

4. Macroeconomics is defined as the field of economic theory that studies:
A) the processes taking place in the national economy, taken as a whole;
B) the role of the state in the economy;
C) global problems of the economic development of mankind;
D) the same problems as political economy in the original sense of the term;
E) correct answers C) and D);

5. Which of the following statements is correct:
A) Economic laws operate objectively, but people must study them and use them in practice;
B) Economic laws operate according to the will of people, people establish them;
C) Economic laws act on their own, regardless of the will and desires of people;
D) Economic laws are the same as legal laws;
E) Answers B and D are correct.

6. What are economic laws:
A) Significant internal, stable causal relationships in industrial relations;
B) Formalized ideas about economic phenomena;
C) Scientific abstractions, allowing to determine the essential aspects of economic phenomena;
D) Articles of the criminal and civil codes that regulate economic relations, economic activities;
E) Legal laws.

7. What are economic categories:
A) simplified statements;
B) subjective assessments of concepts;
C) scientific abstractions expressing certain aspects of industrial relations;
D) causal relationships;
E) formalized ideas about economic phenomena

8. An economy is effective if it achieves:
A) full time employment;
B) full use of production resources;
C) either full employment or full use of other resources;
D) and full employment, and full use of other production resources;
E) all of the above is wrong

9. If economic growth promotes a fair distribution of income, then these two macroeconomic goals are:
A) are logically related to each other;
B) contradict each other;
C) complement each other;
D) are mutually exclusive;

10. What is the economic goal if society seeks to minimize costs and maximize returns from limited productive resources?
A) achieving full employment;
B) maintaining economic growth;
C) economic security;
D) economic efficiency;
E) all of the above is incorrect.

11. Fundamental economic questions “what, how and for whom to produce” are resolved at the micro and macro levels. Which of these questions can be solved only at the macroeconomic level.
A) what is produced?
B) what level of inflation will we face?
C) how many goods and services will be produced?
D) who will produce goods and services?
E) for whom will the goods and services be produced?

12. Choose a function that is not related to the functions of economic theory:
A) Cognitive;
B) Practical;
C) Methodological;
D) Intermediary;
E) Critical.

13. The problem of "what to produce":
A) can only stand before a private entrepreneur, but not before society;
B) can be considered as a problem of choosing a point on the LP;
C) is studied on the basis of the law of diminishing productivity of factors of production;
D) occurs only in conditions of acute shortage of resources;
E) there is no correct answer.

14. Rarity is:
A) Characterization of industrial systems only;
B) A concept that reflects the impossibility of fully satisfying human needs;
C) Characterization of pre-industrial systems only;
D) Efficiency;
E) Effective demand.

15. Determine which of the following triplets of economic resources are examples of only factors of production:
A) bank account, shop owner, sulfur;
B) banker, oil, tractor;
C) geologist, machine tool, money;
D) bonds, coal, foreman;
E) money, technologist, gas.

16. The effective functioning of the economic system on the production possibilities graph reflects:
A) Any point on the production possibilities curve;
B) A point below the production possibilities curve;
C) A point above the production possibilities curve;
D) A point lying on the production possibilities curve and equally distant from both ordinates;
E) Correct answers A and D.

17. For students, the alternative value of studying at the university reflects:
A) The maximum earnings that can be received by working;
B) The amount of the scholarship;
C) State spending on the education of an average specialist;
D) Costs of parents for the maintenance of the student;
E) A young person's time spent on learning;

18. Which of the following characteristics is incorrect in relation to an economic good:
A) Is only the result of production;
B) Can meet people's needs;
C) Is insufficient to meet the needs of all people;
D) It is not free: in order to have an economic good, one must give up another economic good;
E) Correct answers B, C.

19. Limitation is a problem that:
A) Exists only in poor countries;
C) Only poor people have;
C) All people and societies have;
D) Never occurs in rich people;
E) Never occurs in rich countries.

20. The desire of an individual to get the maximum result at the minimum cost is human behavior:
A) Rational;
B) irrational;
C) dependent;
D) Consumer;
E) public.

There are also two types of higher education costs: direct and alternative. Let's consider each of these types in more detail using examples of modern society and personal experience.

To begin with, let's get acquainted with direct costs, which can be fully attributed to a product or service. These include:

• * the cost of raw materials and materials used in the production and sale of goods and services;
• * wages of workers (piecework) directly involved in the production of goods;
• * other direct costs (all costs that are somehow directly related to the product).

This definition is directly related to higher education, the receipt of which incurs direct costs. An example is students who, for one reason or another, study on a commercial basis. Each semester, they must contribute a certain amount of money to continue their studies. Do not forget that with successful studies and active participation in the social and scientific life of the university, you can switch to a budgetary basis for education. In addition, there may be costs for the purchase of stationery and additional educational literature necessary for training. Every month, students must replenish the social card for the purpose of unlimited travel.

opportunity cost

This term was introduced by Friedrich von Wieser, an Austrian economist, in 1914. By definition, Opportunity Costs means the loss of profit (profit, income) as a result of choosing one of the alternative options for using resources and, thereby, refusing other opportunities. The amount of lost profit is determined by the utility (good or service that satisfies human needs) of the most valuable of the discarded alternatives.

On your own example, you can see that in full-time education all the time is devoted to classes. Each module / semester the schedule changes, which does not allow you to get a permanent job or attend additional classes, as there is not enough time. Because of this, many students miss the opportunity to earn extra money and gain experience while working. Also, some cannot afford to attend various sections to develop their talents, or special courses aimed at preparing future specialists. As a result, they do not develop in other directions, only in the one chosen by the university.

It can be assumed that even more discoveries could be made in the modern world in various areas of our life, but due to lack of time or devoting it to other activities, the scientific and technological process does not take place as quickly as we would like.

An alternative option may be a correspondence form of study, which allows you to devote most of your time not to study, but to personal interests. Unfortunately, this type of training is not always complete and most often does not bring as much knowledge and experience as full-time.