Lesson 3- Economic Fallacies, Theories and Laws
Once you have completed this topic you should be able to:
- Realize the importance of economic fallacies, theories, and laws
- Understand the purpose and benefit of economic thinking
- Begin using graphs to support economic thinking and to explore patterns and relationships in the economic world
Success criteria
You will be able to explain how the concepts of scarcity and opportunity costs influence economic decisions, at both the personal and societal levels.
- fallacy -A hypothesis that has been proven false but is still accepted by many people because it appears to be true.
- fallacy of composition- A mistaken belief that what is good for an individual is automatically good for everyone, or what is good for everyone is good for the individual.
- post hoc fallacy (or cause-and-effect fallacy)- A mistaken belief that what occurs before some event is logically the cause of it.
- fallacy of single causation- A mistaken belief, based on oversimplification, that a particular event has one cause rather than several causes.
- opportunity cost- The value or benefit that must be given up to achieve something else. For example, by choosing to produce item A, a business gives up the benefit that it could have gained from producing item B using the same resources.
Group A (Composition): Develop two statements and examples to explain the fallacy of composition in relation to what is good for an individual and what is good for an entire group.
Group B (Post Hoc): Develop two statements to explain the post hoc fallacy and to explain the importance of linking causes to consequences in economic thinking.
Group C (Single Causation): Develop two statements to explain the fallacy of single causation and the importance of distinguishing between sequence and causation in economic thinking.
Specific expectation B1.4
Explain how the concepts of scarcity and opportunity costs influence economic decisions, at both the personal and societal levels?
Students to complete this after you've finished all activities/tasks in today's lesson.