Skip to content
Nydus Open Learning

Economics

Economics · Topics commonly taught around grade 6

Scarcity, choice and trade-offs

Unit

What a choice costs, and why anybody trades. Scarcity and the choice it forces; trade-offs; opportunity cost as the next-best alternative given up and nothing wider; the same reasoning when the scarce thing is money and when it is time; money already spent irrecoverably, and why it does not change a forward-looking comparison; and one more rather than all or nothing. Then the production possibility table and the frontier drawn from it: the opportunity cost read off its slope, what a point inside and a point beyond it mean, and the difference between the whole frontier moving out and a move along the one you have. Finally, who gives up less, and what two producers gain by each doing what they give up least to do. Every model in it names the assumptions it rests on.

Ages 11–12 14 lessons about 10 hours in all

Create an account to start

You can start now whatever you have done before. Nothing on this page has to be finished first. You can pause anytime; your progress saves automatically.

The lessons

Any lesson can be opened now, in any order. The plan recommends one; it does not lock the rest.

  1. 1 Scarcity, and the choice it forces
  2. 2 Trade-offs, and what a choice rules out
  3. 3 Opportunity cost: the next-best alternative
  4. 4 Opportunity cost when money is scarce
  5. 5 Opportunity cost when time is scarce
  6. 6 Money already spent
  7. 7 One more, rather than all or nothing
  8. 8 The production possibility table
  9. 9 Drawing the frontier
  10. 10 Reading the cost off the frontier
  11. 11 Inside the frontier, on it, and beyond it
  12. 12 A shift of the frontier, and a move along it
  13. 13 Who gives up less
  14. 14 What specializing and trading gains