Opportunity Cost

Opportunity cost

the cost of choosing; what you give up by choosing one option

Goods

objects that can fulfill human wants/needs, provide utility

Services

economic activity that is intangible: provided utility, but cannot be stored

endowment

natural and human resources from which all goods and services must be produced, -finite, but not fixed (scarcity)

Utility

satisfaction; economists assume maximizing this drives individual choice; measured in utils 

Profit Motive

the tendency of people to engage in activities that will lead to monetary gain 

Consumer Sovereignty

the economic power of the individual in a free market  

Government regulation

requirements the government places on private firms and individuals to achieve the government’s goals

Marginal Utility

additional increment of utility associated with consuming one more unit of a good or service

Margin

in a succession of units, the specific unit you are focusing on  

total utility

the total satisfaction derived from consuming a specific quantity  of a good or service; the total of marginal utilities for all individual units consumed  

Satiate

satisfy

Initial decision

over-simplified decision-making process based on utility (consume until marginal utility)

Bliss point

maximization of utility

Marginal analysis

evaluating the impact of one additional unit

Util

a measure of utility (abstract)

Diminishing marginal productivity

initially, one input increases the initial successive units of input toward the output, but eventually this will add to less output 

Balancing at the margin

maximizing utility in light of scarcity

Discounting the future

utility diminishes the further in the future that utility is realized