经济学资料（英文版）经济学课本答案chapter 3.docVIP

Problems and Applications 1. In the text example of the farmer and the rancher, the farmer’s opportunity cost of producing one pound of meat is two pounds of potatoes because for every 20 hours of work, he can produce one pound of meat or two pounds of potatoes. With limited time at his disposal, producing a pound of meat means he gives up the opportunity to produce two pounds of potatoes. Similarly, the rancher’s opportunity cost of producing one pound of meat is 1/8 pound of potatoes because for every hour of work, she can produce one pound of meat or 1/8 pound of potatoes. With limited time at her disposal, producing a pound of meat means she gives up the opportunity to produce 1/8 pound of potatoes. 2. a. See Figure 3-2. If Maria spends all five hours studying economics, she can read 100 pages, so that is the vertical intercept of the production possibilities frontier. If she spends all five hours studying sociology, she can read 250 pages, so that is the horizontal intercept. The time costs are constant, so the production possibilities frontier is a straight line. Figure 3-2 b. It takes Maria two hours to read 100 pages of sociology. In that time, she could read 40 pages of economics. So the opportunity cost of 100 pages of sociology is 40 pages of economics. 3. a. Workers needed to make: One Car One Ton of Grain U.S. 1/4 1/10 Japan 1/4 1/5 b. See Figure 3-3. With 100 million workers and four cars per worker, if either economy were devoted completely to cars, it could make 400 million cars. Since a U.S. worker can produce 10 tons of grain, if the U.S. produced only grain it would produce 1,000 million tons. Since a Japanese worker can produce 5 tons of grain, if Japan produced only grain it would produce 500 million tons. These are the intercepts of the production possibilities frontiers shown in the figure. Note that since the tradeoff between cars and grain is constant, the production possibilities frontier is a straight line. Figure 3-3