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- Explicit costs
- Implicit costs
- II Microeconomics
Opportunity costOpportunity cost is the cost of any activity measured in terms of the value of the next best alternative forgone (that is not chosen). It is the sacrifice related to the second best choice available to someone, or group, who has picked among several mutually exclusive choices. The opportunity cost is also the cost of the forgone products after making a choice. Opportunity cost is a key concept in economics, and has been described as expressing "the basic relationship between scarcity and choice". The notion of opportunity cost plays a crucial part in ensuring that scarce resources are used efficiently. Thus, opportunity costs are not restricted to monetary or financial costs: the real cost of output forgone, lost time, pleasure or any other benefit that provides utility should also be considered opportunity costs. Opportunity costs in consumption Opportunity cost is assessed in not only monetary or material terms, but also in terms of anything which is of value. For example, a person who desires to watch each of two television programs being broadcast simultaneously, and does not have the means to make a recording of one, can watch only one of the desired programs. Therefore, the opportunity cost of watching Dallas could be not enjoying the other program (such as Dynasty). If an individual records one program while watching the other, the opportunity cost will be the time that the individual spends watching one program versus the other. In a restaurant situation, the opportunity cost of eating steak could be trying the salmon. The opportunity cost of ordering both meals could be twofold: the extra $20 to buy the second meal, and his reputation with his peers, as he may be thought of as greedy or extravagant for ordering two meals. A family might decide to use a short period of vacation time to visit Disneyland rather than doing household improvements. The opportunity cost of having happier children could therefore be a remodelled bathroom. In environmental protection, opportunity cost is also applicable. This has been demonstrated in the legislation that required the carcinogenic aromatics (mainly reformate) to be largely eliminated from gasoline. Unfortunately, this required refineries to install equipment at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars – and pass the cost to the consumer. The absolute number of cancer cases attributed to exposure to gasoline, however, is low, estimated a few cases per year in the U.S. Thus, the decision to require fewer aromatics has been criticized on the grounds of opportunity cost: the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on process redesign could have been spent on other, more fruitful ways of reducing deaths caused by cancer or automobiles. These actions (or strictly, the best one of them) are the opportunity cost of reduction of aromatics in gasoline
Opportunity costs may be assessed in the decision-making process of production. If the workers on a farm can produce either one million pounds of wheat or two million pounds of barley, then the opportunity cost of producing one pound of wheat is the two pounds of barley forgone (assuming the production possibilities frontier is linear). Firms would make rational decisions by weighing the sacrifices involved. Explicit costsExplicit costs are opportunity costs that involve direct monetary payment by producers. The opportunity cost of the factors of production not already owned by a producer is the price that the producer has to pay for them. For instance, a firm spends $100 on electrical power consumed; their opportunity cost is $100. The firm has sacrificed $100, which could have been spent on other factors of production. Implicit costsImplicit costs are the opportunity costs that in factors of production that a producer already owns. They are equivalent to what the factors could earn for the firm in alternative uses, either operated within the firm or rent out to other firms. For example, a firm pays $300 a month all year for rent on a warehouse that only holds product for six months each year. The firm could rent the warehouse out for the unused six months, at any price (assuming a year-long lease requirement), and that would be the cost that could be spent on other factors of production. Non-monetary opportunity costs Opportunity costs are not always monetary units or being able to produce one good over another. The opportunity cost can also be unknown, or spawn a series of infinite sub opportunity costs. For instance, an individual could choose not to ask a girl out on a date, in an attempt to make her more interested by playing hard to get, but the opportunity cost could be that they get completely ignored, which could lead to other opportunity costs. II MicroeconomicsMicroeconomics is a branch of economics that studies the behaviour of individual households and firms in making decisions on the allocation of limited resources. Typically, it applies to markets where goods or services are bought and sold. Microeconomics examines how these decisions and behaviours affect the supply and demand for goods and services, which determines prices, and how prices, in turn, determine the quantity supplied and quantity demanded of goods and services. This is in contrast to macroeconomics, which involves the "sum total of economic activity, dealing with the issues of growth, inflation, and unemployment." Microeconomics also deals with the effects of national economic policies (such as changing taxation levels) on the aforementioned aspects of the economy. One of the goals of microeconomics is to analyze market mechanisms that establish relative prices amongst goods and services and allocation of limited resources amongst many alternative uses. Microeconomics analyzes market failure, where markets fail to produce efficient results, and describes the theoretical conditions needed for perfect competition. Significant fields of study in microeconomics include general equilibrium, markets under asymmetric information, choice under uncertainty and economic applications of game theory. Also considered is the elasticity of products within the market system.
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