宏观经济学原习题答案.doc

WHAT’S NEW IN THE SEVENTH EDITION: There is an additional example about marginal benefits and marginal costs. LEARNING OBJECTIVES: By the end of this chapter, students should understand: that economics is about the allocation of scarce resources. that individuals face trade-offs. the meaning of opportunity cost. how to use marginal reasoning when making decisions. how incentives affect people’s behavior. why trade among people or nations can be good for everyone. why markets are a good, but not perfect, way to allocate resources. what determines some trends in the overall economy. CONTEXT AND PURPOSE: Chapter 1 is the first chapter in a three-chapter section that serves as the introduction to the text. Chapter 1 introduces ten fundamental principles on which the study of economics is based. In a broad sense, the rest of the text is an elaboration on these ten principles. Chapter 2 will develop how economists approach problems while Chapter 3 will explain how individuals and countries gain from trade. The purpose of Chapter 1 is to lay out ten economic principles that will serve as building blocks for the rest of the text. The ten principles can be grouped into three categories: how people make decisions, how people interact, and how the economy works as a whole. Throughout the text, references will be made repeatedly to these ten principles. KEY POINTS: The fundamental lessons about individual decisionmaking are that people face trade-offs among alternative goals, that the cost of any action is measured in terms of forgone opportunities, that rational people make decisions by comparing marginal costs and marginal benefits, and that people change their behavior in response to the incentives they face. The fundamental lessons about interactions among people are that trade and interdependence can be mutually beneficial, that markets are usually a good way of coordinating economic activity among people, and that the government can potentially improve market outcomes