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As a representation of the relationship between scarcity and choice, [2] the objective of opportunity cost is to ensure efficient use of scarce resources. [3] It incorporates all associated costs of a decision, both explicit and implicit . [ 4 ]
[1] Scarcity is the limited availability of a commodity, which may be in demand in the market or by the commons. Scarcity also includes an individual's lack of resources to buy commodities. [2] The opposite of scarcity is abundance. Scarcity plays a key role in economic theory, and it is essential for a "proper definition of economics itself". [3]
In the context of a PPF, opportunity cost is directly related to the shape of the curve (see below). If the shape of the PPF curve is a straight-line, the opportunity cost is constant as the production of different goods is changing. But, opportunity cost usually will vary depending on the start and end points.
Opportunity cost is also often defined, more specifically, as the highest-value opportunity forgone. So let's say you could have become a brain surgeon, earning $250,000 per year, instead of a ...
The opportunity cost of any activity is the value of the next-best alternative thing one may have done instead. Opportunity cost depends only on the value of the next-best alternative. It does not matter whether one has five alternatives or 5,000. Opportunity costs can tell when not to do something as well as when to do something. For example ...
[2] At competitive equilibrium, the value society places on a good is equivalent to the value of the resources given up to produce it (marginal benefit equals marginal cost). This ensures allocative efficiency-the additional value society places on another unit of the good is equal to what society must give up in resources to produce it. [6]
It measures what an additional unit of one good costs in units forgone of the other good, an example of a real opportunity cost. Thus, if one more Gun costs 100 units of butter, the opportunity cost of one Gun is 100 Butter. Along the PPF, scarcity implies that choosing more of one good in the aggregate entails doing with less of the
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.