Example: opportunity cost

•  Identifying positive and negative aspects of economic growth

•  Explaining how voluntary trade between nations illustrates the benefits of comparative advantage

Example: geographic allocation of resources determining trading advantage

•  Identifying how factors of production and the circular flow of goods and services meet market needs

•  Identifying contributors to modern economics

Examples: Adam Smith and laissez-faire, Karl Marx and Communism

•  Describing the struggle experienced by economies in transition from one type of economic system to another

Examples: Russia, Vietnam, Romania, Iraq, China

•  Explaining how the desire for growth potential, labor supplies, product supplies, and adaptive capability influence a country's choice of economic system

•  Comparing costs and benefits of economic growth

•  Explaining why the characteristics of a market economy result in a thriving economy

Examples: importance of well-defined private property rights, importance of a well-functioning price system

•  Contrasting economic systems of various countries with the market system of the United States

Examples: Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, China, Cuba, North Korea, Mexico, Canada, transitioning economies of former Soviet Union

•  Illustrating how changes in the determinants of supply and demand affect the supply and demand for products in the market

Examples: prices of related goods, consumer tastes and preferences, expectations of future prices, number of consumers and producers

•  Explaining the impact of government-imposed price ceilings and floors and the impact of taxes and regulations on the market demand for a product

Examples: effects of different types of labor unions, the role played by labor productivity

•  Identifying regional characteristics of the labor force of the United States

Example: providing breakdown of gender, race, socioeconomic background, education, age, and regional specialization

•  Explaining how supply and demand for labor affect wages

•  Describing characteristics that are most likely to increase wages and nonwage benefits

Examples: skills, productivity, education, occupation, mobility

Examples: purely competitive markets, oligopolistic markets, governmental-created monopolies, natural monopolies

•  Comparing structures of sole proprietorships, partnerships, corporations, and cooperatives

•  Describing costs and benefits of entrepreneurial decisions

•  Describing how market exchange serves as a means of economic planning for producers

•  Describing the structure and functions of financial markets, including the stock market and the bond market

•  Identifying economic goals for the economy of the United States

Examples: economic growth, economic efficiency, economic security, economic freedom

•  Tracing the impact of government regulations on business and labor relations

•  Explaining conditions under which government intervention may be chosen

Examples: absence of incentives, negative externalities, need for consumer and labor protection

•  Comparing principles and systems of taxation at national, state, and local levels

Examples: flat tax; progressive, regressive, and proportional taxes; income, sales, property, and excise taxes

•  Predicting the effect of public policy decisions on the individual

Examples: positive and negative externalities, public goods and services versus private goods and services

•  Explaining costs and benefits of running a deficit and large national debt in an economy

Examples: rising interest rates, crowding-out effect, hyperinflation of currency, stimulation of a sluggish economy

•  Describing the effect of the patent system of the United States on the number of inventions produced by American inventors

Examples: Gross Domestic Product (GDP), National Income (NI), Personal Income (PI), Disposable Income (DI), price indexes, Consumer Price Index (CPI), GDP deflator

•  Identifying the contribution of final goods and services to the computation of the GDP

•  Comparing data from various regions of the United States and other national economies

•  Describing the function and construction of the CPI

Examples: construction of the market basket, current versus real dollars

•  Identifying factors involved in the business cycle

Examples: phases, causes, indicators

•  Contrasting monetary, cost-push, and demand-pull inflation

•  Contrasting frictional, structural, seasonal, and cyclical unemployment

•  Describing components of the unemployment statistic as defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics

•  Identifying reasons for regional differences in unemployment statistics

•  Discussing the positive and negative aspects of government policies affecting unemployment and underemployment

Examples: minimum wage, age regulations

•  Comparing causes for unemployment in Alabama to those of the nation

•  Explaining how levels of taxes, government spending, and interest rates affect consumer consumption and saving

•  Explaining fiscal policy options for manipulating levels of output and inflation

Examples: Keynesian theory, supply-side theory, monetarist theory, rational expectations theory

Examples: Federal Reserve bank, United States Treasury, federally funded insurance programs

•  Contrasting the effectiveness of bartering and money exchange in an economic system

•  Explaining the creation of money through the multiplier effect

•  Explaining the origins of the Federal Reserve bank and its influence on inflation and deflation

•  Explaining the function of federally funded insurance programs in protecting consumers' savings

Example: protection of personal bank accounts by Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)

•  Describing the structure and monetary policies of the Federal Reserve bank

•  Describing tools available to the Federal Reserve bank to stabilize the economy

Examples: altering reserve requirement, changing discount rate, performing federal open-market operations

•  Identifying primary responsibilities of the Federal Reserve bank

Examples: serving as "Bankers' Bank," creating a stable banking system, conducting monetary policy, stabilizing the business cycle and inflation rate

•  Analyzing the impact of developing nations on the global economy

•  Analyzing the impact of the trade deficit on the economy of the United States

•  Explaining how trading according to the Law of Comparative Advantage affects both poor and wealthy trading nations

•  Analyzing the impact of trade policy on international trade

•  Describing political and economic alliances

Examples: OPEC, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), NAFTA, European Economic Community (EEC), European Union