Students work in groups to examine excerpts from primary source documents. They identify social and economic factors affecting specific categories of people when the Great Migration accelerated in 1916 to 1917: black migrant workers from the South, southern planters, southern small-farm farmers, northern industrialists, agents, and white immigrant workers in the North. Each student group creates a "perspectives page" to post for a gallery walk where students analyze the causes of the Great Migration and the changes it brought to both the North and South. Students also discuss the specific economic factors that influenced the Great Migration: scarcity, supply, demand, surplus, shortage, and opportunity cost. Using the PACED decisionmaking model, they analyze the alternatives and criteria of potential migrants.

In the story, Alexander, Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday, Alexander receives a dollar from his grandparents that he plans to save, but he spends it all, a little at a time. In this lesson, students count by twos to fill a container with 100 pennies. They are asked whether 100 pennies is the same amount of money as one dollar. They listen to the story and as Alexander spends his money, students come up and remove the correct number of pennies from a container. At the end of the story, students are again asked if 100 pennies is the same amount of money as one dollar. Students discuss the choices that Alexander made and give advice on how he could save his money to reach his goal of buying a walkie-talkie.

This video on comparative advantage also discusses absolute advantage. Both are defined and examples are provided. This will aid in the mastery of standard EPF. 9 (a) (b) and (g).

If you look at what psychologists consider to be high-level stressors, you'll find a list of about 40 life events. We have no control over many of these events, but for more than half, we do. So much of our stress and success in life depends on the decisions we make. In this short course, your students will learn the economic underpinnings of the need to make decisions, why every decision bears a cost, and how to make informed decisions.

In this lesson, students hear a story about Brother and Sister Bear, who seem to want everything. The little cubs learn that they must make choices because they cannot have everything they want. Students follow along with the story by completing an activity listing all of the goods that will satisfy the cubs' wants. The students then take part in an activity to construct a word web and graphic organizer (table) to identify goods that will satisfy a want. They will make a choice, identify the problem of scarcity, and recognize their opportunity cost.

This course is an introduction to economics for non-majors and political economy, with an emphasis on the moral and ethical problems that markets solve, and fail to solve. Taught by Professor Michael Munger of Duke University, this course includes full length lectures, links to readings, and a sample final exam.

Cards, Cars and Currency is a set of personal finance programs that encourages participants to learn about three areas of personal finance: credit cards, debit cards and purchasing a car. Cards, Cars and Currency includes five individual programs that can be used together or individually to enhance personal finance learning.

As the Rolling Stones song says, "You can't always get what you want." So we make choices. Every day, governments and individuals choose how much money to spend and what to purchase. The January 2013 issue discusses opportunity costs and scarcity and how they effect our spending decisions.

This series of slides presents the production possibilities frontiers for Alphatown and Omegaville and illustrates their comparative advantage in the production of apples and potatoes, leading to specialization and trade.

In the Comparative Advantage courses, students meet Jack Of All Trades, a most awesome superhero. In all tasks, Jack can do everything better and faster (he has absolute advantage), but does that mean he must do everything while the rest of the people stand around helplessly? Find out if justice is served when a formerly idle citizen, Andy, wades through the depths of opportunity cost and the benefits of comparative advantage.

In this lesson, students play the role of producers in two fictional countries, Acca and Dur. Students use production cards to construct production possibilities tables and graphs. These tables and graphs are used to discuss productivity, opportunity costs, and comparative advantage. Producers in each country discover that if they specialize and trade, they are able to produce and consume more goods than they would have been able to produce and consume on their own.

This set of three activities were written by Sophie Haci and Rachel Polukuri of Houston Community College. They cover demand change, minimum wage, and opportunity cost.

Looking for engaging content for your economics courses? The Institute for Humane Studies has curated this collection of educational resources to help economics professors enrich their curriculum. Find videos, interactive games, reading lists, and more on everything from opportunity costs to trade policy. This collection is updated frequently with new content, so watch this space!

People are passionate about professional sports—they give people pride and a sense of community. And they create economic benefits for the community. But should tax dollars be used to subsidize sports stadiums? The May 2017 issue of Page One Economics describes some pros and cons.

Shopping for and owning things are exciting and emotional experiences. We take time and energy thinking about what to buy and the role it will play in our lives. In this Page One Economics®: Focus on Finance article, we look at the endowment effect—how we place more value on items we own than on items we don’t.

This lesson requires two class periods. In the first class period, students are asked to think of a way to decide who gets 100 pennies and how many each person gets. They learn about the concept of allocation and about different resource allocation methods. They evaluate the different methods using a graphic organizer. Next they listen to different scenarios and try to determine which allocation method was used. Then, after listening to the story Four Feet, Two Sandals about two girls who face some resource allocation issues, they identify the methods used in the story. In the second class period, the students are placed into groups to act out skits illustrating a resource allocation method that their classmates then try to guess. Finally, they read a news article about a resource and write letters to a city council outlining the ways the city could allocate the resource.

Students listen to the story, Glo Goes Shopping. They learn about saving, spending, decision making and opportunity cost. They learn to use a decision-making grid to make decisions. Mathematics skills include learning about rows and columns in a grid.

To understand why people trade, suppose you were limited to consuming only items you could find within walking distance of your house. Or, perhaps even worse, only items you could produce yourself. For most of us, this restriction would severely diminish the variety of goods and services we enjoy on a daily basis. Therefore, the simplest answer to the question is that people (or entire countries) trade because they will enjoy a wider variety of goods.

As Adam Smith said, everyone lives by exchanging. They exchange—buy and sell—to make themselves better off. Does the same principle apply to international trade? Do nations benefit from importing and exporting? The November 2016 issue of Page One Economics explains the basics of international trade and its importance to the economy.