英文版宏观经济学复习提纲 Chapter 1 Economics Foundations and Models_精品.pdfVIP

1 Economics: Foundations and Models Chapter Summary People must make choices as they try to attain their goals. These choices usually imply accepting tradeoffs among various competing objectives. Economic models are simplified versions of some aspects of economic life. Economists construct models and use them to analyse economic issues. Economics focuses on the decisions buyers and sellers make through markets. Every society faces the economic problem of having limited resources. Therefore, society can produce only limited quantities of goods and services. Societies face trade-offs, particularly when answering the three fundamental questions any economy must answer: What goods and services will be produced? How will the goods and services be produced? Who will receive the goods and services produced? Societies organise their economies in two main ways to answer these questions. A society can have a centrally planned economy characterised by extensive government decision making. Or a society can have a market economy in which the decisions of households and firms interacting in markets allocate resources. All high- income democracies have market economies. Market economies tend to allocate resources more efficiently than do centrally planned economies, but efficient outcomes may not be perceived as fair. Determining what is a fair or equitable outcome calls for the application of normative economic analysis - what ought to be. Positive economic analysis is concerned with what is. While most or all economists can agree on the results of positive economic analysis, their opinions often differ on what ought to be. Mic