Economists say that scarcity is a condition every society faces. What does scarcity mean?

In economics, opportunity cost is a way of describing what a choice truly costs. What is an opportunity cost?

A family on the plains of Texas grows wheat and raises cattle to sell. Their work belongs to which category of economic activity?

A plant takes raw cotton picked from farms and turns it into rolls of finished cloth. Which category of economic activity is the plant part of?

A company buys thousands of boxes of cereal from a food plant and resells them in large lots to grocery stores. What kind of activity is this?

A store on a busy street sells single pairs of shoes to the shoppers who walk in. Which category of economic activity is the store part of?

A nurse treating patients and a barber cutting hair both provide work that customers cannot carry home as an object. Which category of economic activity is theirs?

Wholesale and retail businesses both sell goods to buyers. How do the two differ?

A bakery bakes loaves of bread, and a family then buys the bread and eats it at home. What is the family's part of this process called?

A bakery needs flour from farms, ovens bought with savings, and bakers to mix and shape the dough. The bakers' effort is which factor of production?

A furniture workshop buys saws, sanding machines, and workbenches to build tables for sale. These tools are an example of which factor of production?

Scarcity is a problem only for countries that lack natural resources.

As a region's economy develops, the share of workers in farming usually falls. Which pattern of work do those workers most often move into?

A government collects part of what workers earn and what businesses sell in order to pay for roads, schools, and courts. What is this collection called?

A government passes rules that require factories to limit the smoke they release and to test their machines for safety. What is this government action called?

Measures such as literacy rate and standard of living are used to describe how an economy is performing. What is a measure like this called?

A school has enough money for new library books or new lab equipment, but not for both. Which economic idea explains why the school must choose?

A repair shop fixes a customer's broken washing machine. Why is this work counted as a service rather than as a good?

A farmer with one field can plant either corn or cotton, and plants corn. What is the opportunity cost of that decision?

A bank that lends money to a business belongs to the service industry.