Unit 3: Economics Study Guide

Flashcards covering fundamental 3rd-grade economic principles including needs and wants, goods and services, types of resources, opportunity cost, trade, and the production-distribution-consumption cycle.

What is a need?

Something people must have to survive, such as food, water, shelter, and clothing.

What is a want?

Something people would like but do not need to survive, such as toys or video games.

What are goods?

Things people make, grow, or sell, such as shoes, apples, and books.

What are services?

Work people do for others, such as teaching, cutting hair, or cleaning teeth.

What is a producer?

A person or business that makes goods or provides services, such as a baker.

What is a consumer?

A person who buys or uses goods and services, such as a customer buying bread.

What is a natural resource?

Materials from nature, such as water, trees, and soil.

What is a human resource?

People who work to produce goods or services, such as farmers, chefs, and teachers.

What is a capital resource?

Human-made tools or equipment used to produce goods or services, such as tractors, ovens, and computers.

In a bakery, what are examples of natural, human, and capital resources?

Wheat is a natural resource, the baker is a human resource, and the oven is a capital resource.

What is an economic choice?

A decision about how to use limited money or resources.

What is opportunity cost?

The next best choice you give up when you make a decision.

If you choose to play soccer instead of going to the movies, what is your opportunity cost?

Going to the movies.

What is specialization?

When people or countries focus on producing goods or services they can make well.

What is trade?

Exchanging goods or services.

What is interdependence?

When people or countries depend on one another for goods and services.

What is an import?

A good brought INTO a country from another country (Remember: IMport = IN).

What is an export?

A good sent OUT of a country to another country (Remember: EXport = EXIT).

If a country sells coffee to another country, is the coffee an import or an export for the country selling it?

An export.

What is production?

Making or growing goods, such as a farmer growing apples.

What is distribution?

Moving goods to where people can get them, such as a truck delivering apples to a store.

What is consumption?

Using goods and services, such as a family eating apples.