Microeconomics 2011 Chapter 1 微观经济 教学课件.ppt

* * * * * * * Will your tradeoffs improve? You can do your student’s a further favor by helping them to realize that the tradeoffs they face today are as favorable as they will ever be. It’s an old cliché, but effective, to remind them that they are not going to be any more attractive than they are now, nor are they going to gain any additional physical prowess or have any greater capacity to learn than they have at this very moment in their lives. Right now they could do almost anything they set their minds to do. Encourage the students to figure out and be utterly convinced that the benefits they receive from being in college exceed the large opportunity cost that scarcity forces them to bear. Remind them of the relevance of this cost benefit calculation to their decisions to skip classes, not studying for exams, or retake core courses and delay graduation. Scarcity Versus Poverty Ask the students why they haven’t yet attained all of their personal goals. One reason will be that they lack sufficient money. Ask them if they could attain all of their goals if they were as rich as Bill Gates. They quickly realize that time is a big constraint. They have stumbled on the fact that scarcity, which even Bill Gates faces, is not poverty. You can emphasize this distinction. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 8. All other explanations No link statistically evident that capital punishment in the USA has deterred criminals. Punishment using execution is rare and criminals are more likely to die on the streets dealing drugs The one other explanation that the author of the book proposes and substantiates as the most significant is the change in policy in USA opening access to abortion. This is a idea that wasn’t even cited in the publications but the author provides significant reasons why it might explain a lot using a comparison to what happened in Romania (country in Eastern Europe). Source: S. Levitt and S. Dubner, Freakonomics, 2004 Economics as Policy Tool Econo