homework exercise production possibility frontier

• school Campus Bookshelves
• menu_book Bookshelves
• perm_media Learning Objects
• login Login
• how_to_reg Request Instructor Account
• hub Instructor Commons

Margin Size

• Download Page (PDF)
• Download Full Book (PDF)
• Periodic Table
• Physics Constants
• Scientific Calculator
• Reference & Cite
• Tools expand_more
• Readability

selected template will load here

This action is not available.

6.1: Production Possibilities Frontier

• Last updated
• Save as PDF
• Page ID 43773

\( \newcommand{\vecs}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)

\( \newcommand{\vecd}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash {#1}}} \)

\( \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)

( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\) \( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\)

\( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\) \( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\)

\( \newcommand{\inner}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle}\)

\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)

\( \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\)

\( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\)

\( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\)

\( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\)

\( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\)

\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\) \( \newcommand{\AA}{\unicode[.8,0]{x212B}}\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorA}[1]{\vec{#1}}      % arrow\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorAt}[1]{\vec{\text{#1}}}      % arrow\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorB}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorC}[1]{\textbf{#1}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorD}[1]{\overrightarrow{#1}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorDt}[1]{\overrightarrow{\text{#1}}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectE}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash{\mathbf {#1}}}} \)

Supply and demand offers one approach to understanding trade, and it represents the most important and powerful concept in the toolbox of economists. However, for some issues, especially those of international trade, another related tool is very useful: the production possibilities frontier. Analysis using the production possibilities frontier was made famous by the “guns and butter” discussions of World War II. From an economic perspective, there is a trade-off between guns and butter—if a society wants more guns, it must give up something, and one thing to give up is butter. While the notion of getting more guns might lead to less butter often seems mysterious, butter is, after all, made with cows, and indirectly with land and hay. But the manufacture of butter also involves steel containers, tractors to turn the soil, transportation equipment, and labor, all of which either can be directly used (steel, labor) or require inputs that could be used (tractors, transportation) to manufacture guns. From a production standpoint, more guns entail less butter (or other things).

Learning Objectives

• What can we produce, and how does that relate to cost?

Formally, the set of production possibilities is the collection of “feasible outputs” of an individual, group or society, or country. You could spend your time cleaning your apartment, or you could study. The more time you devote to studying, the higher your grades will be, but the dirtier your apartment will be. This is illustrated, for a hypothetical student, in Figure 6.1.

The production possibilities set embodies the feasible alternatives. If you spend all your time studying, you could obtain a 4.0 (perfect) grade point average (GPA). Spending an hour cleaning reduces the GPA, but not by much; the second hour reduces it by a bit more, and so on.

The boundary of the production possibilities set is known as the production possibilities frontier. This is the most important part of the production possibilities set because, at any point strictly inside the production possibilities set, it is possible to have more of everything, and usually we would choose to have more.To be clear, we are considering an example with two goods: cleanliness and GPA. Generally there are lots of activities, like sleeping, eating, teeth brushing, and so on; the production possibilities frontier encompasses all of these goods. Spending all your time sleeping, studying, and cleaning would still represent a point on a three-dimensional frontier. The slope of the production possibilities frontier reflects opportunity cost because it describes what must be given up in order to acquire more of a good. Thus, to get a cleaner apartment, more time or capital, or both, must be spent on cleaning, which reduces the amount of other goods and services that can be had. For the two-good case in Figure 6.1, diverting time to cleaning reduces studying, which lowers the GPA. The slope dictates how much lost GPA there is for each unit of cleaning.

Figure 6.1 The production possibilities frontier

Consider two people, Ann and Bob, getting ready for a party. One is cutting up vegetables; the other is making hors d’oeuvres. Ann can cut up 2 ounces of vegetables per minute, or make one hors d’oeuvre in a minute. Bob, somewhat inept with a knife, can cut up 1 ounce of vegetables per minute, or make 2 hors d’oeuvres per minute. Ann and Bob’s production possibilities frontiers are illustrated in Figure 6.2, given that they have an hour to work.

Since Ann can produce 2 ounces of chopped vegetables in a minute, if she spends her entire hour on vegetables, she can produce 120 ounces. Similarly, if she devotes all her time to hors d’oeuvres, she produces 60 of them. The constant translation between the two means that her production possibilities frontier is a straight line, which is illustrated on the left side of Figure 6.2. Bob’s is the reverse—he produces 60 ounces of vegetables or 120 hors d’oeuvres, or something on the line in between.

Figure 6.2 Two production possibilities frontiers

For Ann, the opportunity cost of an ounce of vegetables is half of one hors d’oeuvre—to get one extra ounce of vegetables, she must spend 30 extra seconds on vegetables. Similarly, the cost of one hors d’oeuvre for Ann is 2 ounces of vegetables. Bob’s costs are the inverse of Ann’s—an ounce of vegetables costs him two hors d’oeuvres.

Figure 6.3 Joint PPF

Now change the hypothetical slightly. Suppose that Bob and Ann are putting on separate dinner parties, each of which will feature chopped vegetables and hors d’oeuvres in equal portions. By herself, Ann can only produce 40 ounces of vegetables and 40 hors d’oeuvres if she must produce equal portions. She accomplishes this by spending 20 minutes on vegetables and 40 minutes on hors d’oeuvres. Similarly, Bob can produce 40 of each, but by using the reverse allocation of time.

By working together, they can collectively have more of both goods. Ann specializes in producing vegetables, and Bob specializes in producing hors d’oeuvres. This yields 120 units of each, which they can split equally to have 60 of each. By specializing in the activity in which they have lower cost, Bob and Ann can jointly produce more of each good.

Moreover, Bob and Ann can accomplish this by trading. At a “one for one” price, Bob can produce 120 hors d’oeuvres, and trade 60 of them for 60 ounces of vegetables. This is better than producing the vegetables himself, which netted him only 40 of each. Similarly, Ann produces 120 ounces of vegetables and trades 60 of them for 60 hors d’oeuvres. This trading makes them both better off.

The gains from specialization are potentially enormous. The grandfather of economics, Adam Smith, wrote about specialization in the manufacture of pins:

One man draws out the wire; another straights it; a third cuts it; a fourth points it; a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business; to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them.Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, originally published in 1776, released by the Gutenberg project, 2002.

Smith goes on to say that skilled individuals could produce at most 20 pins per day acting alone; but that, with specialization, 10 people could produce 48,000 pins per day, 240 times as many pins per capita.

Key Takeaways

• The production possibilities set is the collection of “feasible outputs” of an individual or group.
• The boundary of the production possibilities set is known as the production possibilities frontier.
• The principle of diminishing marginal returns implies that the production possibilities frontier is concave toward the origin, which is equivalent to increasing opportunity cost.
• Efficiencies created by specialization create the potential for gains from trade.
• The Manning Company has two factories, one that makes roof trusses and one that makes cabinets. With m workers, the roof factory produces m trusses per day. With n workers, the cabinet plant produces 5 n . The Manning Company has 400 workers to use in the two factories. Graph the production possibilities frontier. (Hint: Let T be the number of trusses produced. How many workers are used to make trusses?)
• Alarm & Tint, Inc., has 10 workers working a total of 400 hours per week. Tinting takes 2 hours per car. Alarm installation is complicated, however, and performing A alarm installations requires A 2 hours of labor. Graph Alarm & Tint’s production possibilities frontier for a week.
• Draw the Edgeworth box for this economy.
• Find the contract curve and the individually rational part of it. (You should describe these in writing and highlight them in the Edgeworth box.)
• Find the prices that support an equilibrium of the system and the final allocation of goods under those prices.

For Questions 4 to 7, consider an orange juice factory that uses, as inputs, oranges and workers. If the factory uses x pounds of oranges and y workers per hour, it produces gallons of orange juice; \(\begin{equation}T=20 x^{0.25} y^{0.5}\end{equation}\).

• Suppose oranges cost $1 and workers cost $10. What relative proportion of oranges and workers should the factory use?
• Suppose a gallon of orange juice sells for $1. How many units should be sold, and what is the input mix to be used? What is the profit?
• Generalize the previous exercise for a price of p dollars per gallon of orange juice.
• What is the supply elasticity?

Module 2: Choice in a World of Scarcity

The production possibilities frontier, learning objectives.

• Explain the production possibilities frontier

Just as individuals cannot have everything they want and must instead make choices, society as a whole cannot have everything it might want, either. Economists use a model called the production possibilities frontier (PPF) to explain the constraints society faces in deciding what to produce.

As you read this section, you will see parallels between individual choice and societal choice. There are more similarities than differences, so for now focus on the similarities.

While individuals face budget and time constraints, societies face the constraint of limited resources (e.g. labor, land, capital, raw materials, etc.). Because at any given moment, society has limited resources, it follows that there’s a limit to the quantities of goods and services it can produce. In other words, the products are limited because the resources are limited.

Suppose a society desires two products: health care and education. This situation is illustrated by the production possibilities frontier in Figure 1.

Figure 1. A production possibilities frontier showing health care and education.

Health care is shown on the vertical (or y) axis, and education is shown on the horizontal (or x) axis. Where does the PPF come from? It comes from the production processes for producing the two goods, and the limited amounts of resources available to use for that purpose. For example, suppose one teacher can teach 25 students in school. If society has a total of 10 teachers, education can be provided to a maximum of 250 students. We would say one teacher could “produce” 25 students worth of education using the education processes available.

Suppose a society allocated all of its resources to producing health care. That is certainly one possible way of allocating a society’s resources, but it would mean there would be no resources left for education. This choice is shown in Figure 1 at point A. Similarly, the society could allocate all of its resources to producing education, and none to producing healthcare, as shown at point F. Alternatively, the society could choose to produce any combination of health care and education shown on the production possibilities frontier. In effect, the production possibilities frontier plays the same role for society as the budget constraint plays for an individual consumer. Society can choose any combination of the two goods on or inside the PPF. However, it does not have enough resources to produce outside the PPF.

Most importantly, the production possibilities frontier clearly shows the tradeoff between healthcare and education. Suppose society has chosen to operate at point B, and it’s considering producing more education. Because the PPF is downward sloping from left to right, the only way society can obtain more education is by giving up some health care. That’s the trade-off this society faces. Suppose it considers moving from point B to point C. What would be the opportunity cost for the additional education? The opportunity cost would be the health care that society has to give up.

Do you remember Charlie choosing combinations of burgers and bus tickets within his budget constraint? In effect, the production possibilities frontier plays the same role for society as the budget constraint plays for Charlie. Society can choose any combination of the two goods on or inside the PPF, but it doesn’t have enough resources to produce outside the PPF. Just as with Charlie’s budget constraint, the opportunity cost is shown by the  slope of the production possibilities frontier.

Differences between a Budget Constraint and a PPF

We’re now ready to address the differences between society’s PPF and an individual’s budget constraint.

A budget constraint shows the different combinations of goods and services a consumer can purchase with their fixed budget. A production possibilities frontier shows the possible combinations of goods and services that a society can produce with its limited resources. The first difference between a budget constraint and a production possibilities frontier is that the PPF, because it’s looking at societal choice, is going to have much larger numbers on the axes than those on an individual’s budget constraint.

The most important difference between the two graphs, though, is that a budget constraint is a straight line, while a production possibilities curve is typically bowed outwards , i.e. concave towards the origin. The reason for this difference is pretty simple: the slope of a budget line is defined as the ratio of the prices of the two goods or services. No matter how many of each good or service a consumer buys, the prices stay the same. By contrast, the slope of a PPF is the cost to society of producing one good or service relative to the other good or service. When society reallocates resources from one product to another, the relative costs change, which means the slope of the PPF does also. Let’s dig into this.

To understand why the PPF is curved, start by considering point A at the top left-hand side of the PPF. Considering the situation in Figure 1 (shown again below), suppose we have only two types of resources: doctors and teachers. At point A, all available resources (i.e. all the doctors and all the teachers) are devoted to providing health care and none is left for education. Say the doctors are practicing medicine and the teachers are helping out as best they can. This situation would be extreme and even ridiculous. For example, children are seeing a doctor every day, whether they’re sick or not, but not attending school. People are having cosmetic surgery on every part of their bodies, but no high school or college education exists!

Now imagine that some of these resources are diverted from health care to education, so that the economy is at point B instead of point A. What type of resources are going to move to producing education? The doctors are good at medicine, but they’re not particularly good at teaching, so it doesn’t make sense for them to switch. The teachers, though, are good at education, and not very good at healthcare. After all, that’s not what they were trained for. So it makes sense for teachers to be reallocated from healthcare to education. And when they move, the society doesn’t lose much healthcare, because the teachers weren’t very good at that. But the amount of education gained is great, because that’s what teachers are trained for. What this means is that from point A to B, the decrease in healthcare is small, while the gain in education is large. Graphically, the rise is small and the run is large so the slope (which is the ratio of rise over run) is flat. In other words, the opportunity cost of education in terms of healthcare is low.

Figure 1 (shown again). A production possibilities frontier showing health care and education.

If we started at the other end of the PPF at point F and moved to point D, we would be moving doctors from teaching to healthcare with the result that the gain in healthcare would be large while the loss in education would be small (the same logic we used above). In short, the slope of the PPF from point F to D would be steep, and the opportunity cost of education in terms of healthcare would be high.

More generally, as society produces more and more of some good or service, the cost of production grows larger and larger relative to the cost of producing other goods or services. Thus, the slope of a PPF starts flat and becomes increasingly steeper. In the real world, of course, we have more than two goods and services, and we have more resources than just labor, but the general rule still holds.

There’s another way to think about this. For consumers, there is only one scarce resource: budget dollars. As we choose more of one good and less of another, we are simply spending dollars on different items, but every dollar is worth the same in purchasing any item. For society, there are many scarce resources. In our simple example above, there were two different resources: doctors and teachers, and each resource is better at one job than at the other. In other words, each resource is not worth the same at producing different products. The general rule is when one is allocating only a single scarce resource, the trade-off (e.g. budget line) will be constant, but when there is more than one scarce resources, the trade-off will be increasingly costly (e.g. the PPF).

Law of Diminishing Returns and the Curved Shape of the PPF

Figure 2. If you’ve ever pulled an all-nighter, you’re probably familiar with the law of diminishing returns: as the night wears on and you get tired, every additional hour you study is a little less productive than the one before.

The lesson is not that society is likely to make an extreme choice like devoting no resources to education at point A or no resources to health at point F. Instead, the lesson is that the gains from committing additional marginal resources to education depend on how much is already being spent. If, on the one hand, very few resources are currently committed to education, then an increase in resources used can bring relatively large gains. On the other hand, if a large number of resources are already committed to education, then committing additional resources will bring relatively smaller gains.

This pattern is so common that it has been given a name: the  law of diminishing returns.  This law asserts that as additional increments of resources are devoted to a certain purpose, the marginal benefit from those additional increments will decline. For example, after not spending much at all on crime reduction, when a government spends a certain amount more, the gains in crime reduction could be relatively large. But additional increases after that typically cause relatively smaller reductions in crime, and paying for enough police and security to reduce crime to zero would be tremendously expensive.

The curve of the production possibilities frontier shows that as additional resources are added to education, moving from left to right along the horizontal axis, the initial gains are fairly large, but those gains gradually diminish. Similarly, as additional resources are added to health care, moving from bottom to top on the vertical axis, the initial gains are fairly large but again gradually diminish. In this way, the law of diminishing returns produces the outward-bending shape of the production possibilities frontier.

• Revision and adaptation. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• The Production Possibilities Frontier and Social Choices. Authored by : OpenStax College. Located at : https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:BxoHdm8G@8/The-Production-Possibilities-F . License : CC BY: Attribution
• Hard Studies. Authored by : Thomas Anderson. Located at : https://www.flickr.com/photos/senoranderson/3890652995/ . License : CC BY: Attribution
• The Production Possibilities Frontier, Part 3 The Economic Lowdown Video Series. Authored by : Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw0ugthoc8o . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License
• The Production Possibilities Frontier, Part 1 The Economic Lowdown Video Series. Authored by : Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=nsQi2ipSP2c . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License

• International
• Schools directory
• Resources Jobs Schools directory News Search

Production Possibility Frontier (PPF) - Homework, Starter, Revision or Flipped Learning task

Subject: Economics

Age range: 16+

Resource type: Worksheet/Activity

Last updated

1 June 2024

• Share through email
• Share through twitter
• Share through linkedin
• Share through facebook
• Share through pinterest

As a practising Economics teacher, I used this in my lesson as a ‘flipped learning’ resource. Students respond really well to them, and it has upped my homework completion ratio massively! It works equally well as a generic homework activity, a revision tool or a starter activity, however. Student feedback is very positive.

The four-page A4 worksheets can be used to introduce a particular topic. Essentially I distribute the forthcoming task sheet and set as a homework, or just allow reading time as a starter of a lesson. I expect students to have read the text, read the key words and at least attempted the questions before the lesson. We then discuss the text and responses at the start of the lesson, before covering the topic in detail.

I really find them useful as they are excellent and easy homework tasks with limited marking - as marking takes place as the starter of the next lesson. If you prefer not to print them, you can distribute via Teams or even on OneNote (which is what I do), do reduce photocopying. Of course printing is an option, too.

The format of the worksheet is broadly: A thought provoking image, related to the topic in question. This can be used for discussion; a side of text, covering the key elements of the topic; for literacy purposes, definitions of three to five of the key terms featured in the text; Three multiple- choice questions which are generally pretty easy if the student has read the text; approximately three short answer questions; approximately two longer answer questions, open for discussion in the lesson.

These have been written specifically for Edexcel A-Level Economics, but they would work equally well for other exam boards, no problem at all.

Tes paid licence How can I reuse this?

Your rating is required to reflect your happiness.

It's good to leave some feedback.

Something went wrong, please try again later.

This resource hasn't been reviewed yet

To ensure quality for our reviews, only customers who have purchased this resource can review it

Report this resource to let us know if it violates our terms and conditions. Our customer service team will review your report and will be in touch.

Not quite what you were looking for? Search by keyword to find the right resource:

For Teachers and Students

• For Teachers & Students
• Econ Lowdown Teacher Portal
• Find Teacher Resources
• Scope and Sequence
• Permitted Use

Production Possibilities

Students develop the production possibilities frontier model while discussing the value of models in general in explaining complex ideas. They see what movement along the production possibilities curve entails—on both the constant-cost curve and a bowed curve indicating increasing costs. They discuss ways a society can consume beyond the limits of its production possibilities through specialization and trade, as well as through an increase in resources, capital investment, and technological advance.

•  Lesson to accompany SMART/notebook (pdf) •  SMART (notebook) •  Lesson to accompany PowerPoint (pdf) •  PowerPoint (pptx)

If you have difficulty accessing this content due to a disability, please contact us at 314-444-8624 or [email protected] .

Find More Economics and Personal Finance Resources

If you're seeing this message, it means we're having trouble loading external resources on our website.

If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked.

To log in and use all the features of Khan Academy, please enable JavaScript in your browser.

Microeconomics

Course: microeconomics   >   unit 1.

• Production possibilities curve
• Opportunity cost
• Increasing opportunity cost

The Production Possibilities Frontier

• PPCs for increasing, decreasing and constant opportunity cost
• Lesson summary: the production possibilities frontier
• Interpreting graphs of the production possibilities curve (PPC)
• Calculating opportunity costs from a production possibilities curve (PPC)

• The Production Possibilities Frontier (PPF) is a graph that shows all the different combinations of output of two goods that can be produced using available resources and technology. The PPF captures the concepts of scarcity, choice, and tradeoffs.
• The shape of the PPF depends on whether there are increasing, decreasing, or constant costs.
• Points that lie on the PPF illustrate combinations of output that are productively efficient . We cannot determine which points are allocatively efficient without knowing preferences.
• The slope of the PPF indicates the opportunity cost of producing one good versus the other good, and the opportunity cost can be compared to the opportunity costs of another producer to determine comparative advantage.

The Production Possibilities Frontier and Social Choices

The shape of the ppf and the law of diminishing returns, productive efficiency and allocative efficiency, why society must choose, the ppf and comparative advantage, key concepts and summary, self-check questions, review questions, critical thinking questions, attribution, want to join the conversation.

• Upvote Button navigates to signup page
• Downvote Button navigates to signup page
• Flag Button navigates to signup page

Improving economics teaching and learning for over 20 years

The Production Possibility Frontier Game

James Mackley School of Business and Economics, Swansea University [email protected] Published October 2007

https://doi.org/10.53593/n145a

Introduction

Running the game, student experience.

This game was created for the Foundation Economics programme at Swansea University. The game introduces students to the concepts of opportunity cost, diminishing marginal opportunity costs and production possibility frontier curves. In line with current foundation economics textbooks, production possibility frontier curves and opportunity costs are some of the first economic concepts our foundation students deal with on the course (note) . This game involves students playing a production game and creating their own PPF curves. It uses ideas developed from two sources: Mary Hedges’ Tennis Balls in Economics and Bergstrom and Miller’s 1997 book Experiments with Economic Principles .

Our imaginary economy produces two goods – food (tennis balls) & clothing (paper balls). There are 10 workers in total. (The number of workers can depend on the size of your group and the size of your teaching area.)

The two sets of balls are placed into separate raw material containers in the middle of the room. Two empty containers (for finished goods) are placed at each end of the room. A unit is produced when a ball is moved from a raw material container to a finished good container. The students must stand in a “production” line and pass the ball along the line. Each student must hold every ball but can only hold one ball at a time. The containers need to be a fair distance apart. Try to ensure that when all the students are on one side they can only just reach to pass the balls to each other. It is advisable, for health and safety reasons, to have a ‘no throwing’ and ‘no running’ rule.

Production takes place in sessions. Each session consists of 30 seconds of production time. The number of workers producing each good will vary for each session. Start with all the students producing one of the goods;then gradually move students across to the other production line. The number of balls in each end container is your output. Once a session is over, return all the balls to their original containers. Plot the output from each session to create your PPF curve. You can also use your results to calculate the marginal opportunity cost of each good.

The game can be used to demonstrate movement in the PPF curve. For instance, mimic a new production process by allowing students to hold two balls at once. Run this game for the same number of sessions and plot the results against your original PPF curve. This should have the effect of shifting the PPF curve outwards. Alternatively, allow this new production method for only one type of production, which causes the PPF curve to pivot. If numbers allow, you could also increase the number of workers and see what happens to the PPF.

Due to foundation students’ mixed grasp of English, the simplicity of the game is particularly helpful. It enables students to become actively involved in the learning process and constitutes an invaluable supplement to more conventional teaching methods. As the PPF lectures are held at the start of the module, the game also works as an excellent ice-breaker. In order to make the game easier to run, and to offer a visual indicator for the students, I have developed an excel application which can be used [along the way] to display the results of the game. Students thus learn how the PPF if formed, and particularly how it can pivot and shift. Although this application is primarily used to display results in a lecture setting, it can also be emailed to students to give them a chance to play with PPFs and calculate the marginal opportunity cost in their own time.

See Excel file PPFGame and support document User Guide PPFgame for support in running the game and presenting the results.

Bergstrom, T. and Miller, J. H. (1997), ‘ Experiments with Economic Principles: Microeconomics’ , McGraw-Hill Companies

Dobson, S. and Palfreman, S. (1999), ‘ Introduction to Economics’ , Oxford University Press

Gillespie, A. (2007), ‘ Foundations of Economics’ , Oxford University Press

Hedges, M. (2004), "Tennis Balls in Economics" , Economics Network

Mr James Mackley School of Business and Economics Swansea University SA2 8PP [email protected]

(1) Both the core textbooks we use begin with a discussion of these issues. Gillespie (2007) and Dobson and Palfreman (1999).

• Curriculum and content
• Online and distance learning
• James Mackley
• 65848 views
• Views on request