Темы для экзамена в Финансовой академии, 1 курс
№1. Economic Goods and Services.
People begin to learn about economics when they are still very young. At
first they find that they want a lot of but they couldn’t bye everything.
There is a big gap between what they want and what they can have.
Than they discover that there are thousands of things they or their
parents could buy. Gradually, they settle into two major economic roles:
consumer and producer.
Consumer buy goods and services for personal use, not for resale. Consumer
goods are products, such as food, clothing, and cars, that satisfy people's
economic needs or wants. Some consumer goods, such as food, do not last a
long time. It’s perishable goods. Other goods, such as cars or VCRs, last
longer. Services are actions , such as haircutting, cleaning or teaching.
Services are used up at the time they are provided.
A producer makes the goods or provides the services that consumers use.
In order to produce something, a person must first have right resources.
Resources are the materials from which goods and services are made. There
are three kinds of resources: human (people), natural (raw materials), and
capital resources (capital, or the money or property). No economy has an
unlimited supply of resources. In other words , there is a scarcity of
resources.
The basic economic questions individuals and nations face are: What goods
and services will be produced? How will they be produced ? Who will get
them ? How much will be produced for now and how much for the future? The
answers to the questions depend on a country's human, natural, and capital
resources. Each country will answer 4 questions in a different way.
№2. Opportunity costs. Tradeoffs.
All production involves a cost. This cost is not counted simply in terms
of money but also in terms of resources used. In building a bridge, for
example, the real costs of the bridge are the human, capital, and natural
resources it consumes. To build a bridge requires the labour of many
people, including engineers and construction workers. The capital resources
these people use include a variety of tools and machines. Building a bridge
also requires natural resources.
Since resources are limited and human wants are unlimited, people and
societies must make choices about what they want most. Each choice involves
costs. The value of time, money, goods and services given up in making a
choice is called opportunity cost.
When people make a choice between two possible uses of their resources,
they are making a tradeoff between them.
Then, society will understand the true costs of making one decision rather
than another, and can make the decision that best fits its values and
goals.
How can the concepts of opportunity costs and tradeoffs be used to help
explain how the economy works? One way is to construct a simple plan of the
economy called an economic model. The simple plan helps economists to
analyse economic problems, seek solutions, and make comparisons between the
economic model and the real world.
One of the most important choices a society makes is between producing
capital goods and producing consumer goods. If a nation increases its
production of consumer goods, its people will live better lives today.
However, if a nation increases its production of capital goods, its people
may live better in the future.
Since every economic decision requires a choice, economics is a study of
tradeoffs. When you analyse each side of a tradeoff, you can make better
decisions.
№11. Pricing policies.
There are two types of pricing policies: to concern price emphasis and to
emphasize low prices. The price emphasis charge appropriate prices, it
encourages sales, but the low prices don’t give extra services (some people
are interested in low prices and forget about extra services). The price
determines the number of sales. A good example of price emphasis is loss
leader pricing. It means that you chose one item and sell it at a very low
price. The consumer buys it and decides to buy something else, because he
gets some extra cash. There is also off-even pricing: it produces a
favorable psychological effect (79,99$).
And now something about de-emphasis: it concerns high quality expensive
items. Consumers don’t call attention to the price at all.
№3. Utility and prices.
Commodities of different kinds satisfy our wants in different ways. For
example: food, car, medicine, books satisfy very different wants. This
characteristic of satisfying a want is known in economics as “utility”.
Utility and usefulness are different things. For example: a submarine may
or may not be useful in time of peace, but it satisfy a want. Many nations
want submarine. Economists say that utility is “the relationship between a
consumer and a commodity”.
Utility varies between different people and different nations. For
example: somebody can be a vegetarian and he will be rate the utility of
vegetable very highly, while somebody who eats meat can rate the utility
of meat very highly. And about nations: mountain-republic like Switzerland
has little interest in submarines while maritime nations rate then very
highly.
Utility varies is also in relation of time. For example: in wartime the
utility of bombs and guns is high. Utility of the commodity is also depend
from quantity. If paper is freely available, people will not be so much
interested in buying too much of it. If there is an excess of paper, the
relative demand for paper will go down.
Let’s speak about prices.
Individual cannot change the prices of the commodities he wants. But
theoretical he can do it. For example, if he byes a lot of smth., let’s say
a lot of oil, or somebody discover a lot of oil, the price of oil will
change on the international market.
Now let’s speak about desire.
The consumer’s desire for a commodity tends to diminish (ди/миниш) as he
buys more units of it. Economists call this tendency the Low of Diminishing
Marginal Utility.
The interaction of buyers and sellers determines the prices for goods and
services. If the price is too low, a shortage will develop and if the price
is too high, a surplus will develop.
In a market economy, prices are the result of the needs of both buyers and
sellers. The sellers will supply more goods at higher prices. The buyer
will buy more goods at lower prices. Some prices is satisfactory to both
buyers and sellers. This price is called an equilibrium price.
№4 Supply and demand.
In a market economy, the actions of buyers and sellers set the prices of
goods and services. The price, in turn, determine what is produced, how it
is produced and who will bay it. Supply, the quantity of a product that
suppliers will provide, is the seller’s side of a market transaction.
Suppliers usually want the price that allows them to make the most money.
Demand, the quantity of a product consumer want, is a buyer’s side of a
market transaction. Buyers want the price that gives them the most value
for the least cost.
The items are sold one at a time, buyers mast quickly decided what price
they are willing to pay. Imagine now that you want to buy electric popcorn
maker on the auction. In order to get it you will have to outbid all the
others who want it. New popcorn maker costs about $14 and you decided you
are willing to go as high as $10 but not hire. At first you look into your
wallet. Only $5 is there. But you know that you have $15 on the desk at
home, and you know that your friend can lend you some money. And what
factors so far have influence you? You decision is the result of your
tastes, your available cash income, your wealth, your credit. You have also
had to think of the price of substitutes and the price of related items.
And on the auction you buy. The cost of popcorn maker is $9.
The popcorn demand schedule illustrates the low of demand, which indicates
that as the price of an item increases, a smaller quantity will be bought.
The degree to which changes in price cause changes in quantity demanded is
called elasticity of demand. There are two main kinds of the elasticity of
demand, it is highly elastic and inelastic. Highly elastic means that
demand changes when the price changes and inelastic means when people buy
nearly the same amount even though the price of smth. changes.
There are two main reasons for elasticity of demand. The first concerns
the relationship between income and the cost of the product. The second
reason why demand is elastic concerns whether or not substitute product is
available.
№5. Markets and monopolies.
Whenever people who are willing to sell a commodity contact people willing
to buy it, a market for that commodity is created. Buyers and sellers meet
in person, or they may communicate by letter, by phone or through their
agents. In a perfect market there can be only one price for a given
commodity: the lowest price which sellers will accept and the highest which
consumers will pay. Competition influences the prices prevailing in the
market. Although in a perfect market competition is unrestricted and
sellers are numerous, free competition and large numbers of sellers are not
always available in the real world. In some markets there may only be one
seller or a very limited number of sellers. Such a situation is called a
"monopoly". It is possible to distinguish in practice four kinds of
monopoly.
State planning and central control of the economy often mean that a state
