Topic 5: Ripple Effects and Elasticity

         Ripple effect is when a single subject change the price, it influences many other products that are related to it’s which create a difficult pattern to predict. For example if the price of corn increases, the price of animals who eat corn increase. If the price of oil increases then most of products or things’ cost increase. For example crayon, fish, food and other thing. Anything that includes transportation in the process will raise their cost because oil’s price increases. The rise of cost of oil will affect individual as well. It will affect our family too because most of the thing we use include transportation in the process that mean the cost of everything we use rise. Also every time when my parents drive me to somewhere, the price of driving me to a certain place increase as well. Like what I said before, corn is another ripple effect because when the cost of corn increase. Any animals that eat corns will increase their price because they need more money to let them be full.

        The idea of elasticity effect can influence the market because if an object is very elastic, the quantity will increase in a great amount even if the price only changes a little bit. However, if the object is inelastic, the quantity will not change a lot even though the price changes a lot. I want the new iPhone and it is elastic because people are deciding between if they shall get an iPhone or other types of smart phone. This mean that if the iPhone price decrease a great amount of people will have a great incentive to buy iPhone instead of other types of smart phone.

Topic 4: Where Choices Lead

       There is always opportunity cost when people are making a decision. Some opportunity costs of getting into PAS for me are the education of local school, less money pay for school and time in Taiwan. The opportunity costs of taking AP Micro are classes that I can take during that class time and less study times.

        I think my choice of coming to PAS is rational. The benefit of coming to PAS is that there is a much higher chance of getting in a good college or university. Another great benefit is that I can improve my English ability in PAS which is very important for our future jobs or business. On the other hand, the opportunity costs are about money and time. Therefore I think the benefits of coming to PAS are much greater than the opportunity costs and this make my decision rational.

        I think my decision of coming to this class is rational. This is because the benefits of taking this class are possible to score a higher GPA, complete my prerequisite of social study for University. The opportunity costs are taking other class that is easier and less study time. From my own opinion that I think my decision is rational because I still need social study credit and I’m also interesting in this class more than other social study. Even though I may spend more time on study, but I think is worth it to do so.

        I will still make the same decisions even if I have full freedom to choice whatever I want.

Topic 3: Incentives to Attend School

        The video “Incentives for Perfect Attendance,” use incentives to make students attend to school. This is because some students rather go to work and get money than going to school. The school decide to give them laptop and car if students attend to school. The disincentive is that the students are living in a pool family, so they rather go earn money for their family instead of going to school. I think that punishments are stronger incentives compare to reward because people might not want the reward because they either don’t want it or don’t need it. However, most people don’t want to get punish, therefore punishment are mush efficient.

        In PAS, we use punishment more than reward. For example, the lock out policy and the punishment for speaking Chinese are all punishments. The incentive in our school is that if you work hard in the school, you can go to a better college. However, if you don’t work hard in the school, it’s possible that you may get expel from the school. These incentives are effective and students change because of the incentive. For example, there are less people who are late after the lock out policy. The goal in the video is to make sure that all students are attending the school which is one of the goals of our school as well. The incentives that are use in the video are mostly reward. However in PAS, the incentives are mostly punishments.

Topic 2: Scarcity at School?

People are always making decision about which one to choose when they are facing different type of scarcity. People in PAS also face scarcity all the time. For example, students in PAS may face scarcity when they are picking their classes. They may be picking between P.E. and expository writing. They have to give up when in order to take another. For example if the student takes P.E., then he can’t take expository writing class. Another example is that teachers will face scarcity when they are thinking about if they shall teach an extra class or not. If the teacher teaches an extra class that means that they can get extra money from them but the trade off for making that choice is the teacher need to spend more time and energy for that extra class.

        Example about me is when I am making a choice between taking an extra AP class or not. At choose to take an extra AP class which is AP computer science because I think I can handle it and I can get a study hall if I take it. The trade off of taking AP computer science is that I give up P.E. class and need to work harder for the AP test. The resources that I want more are classes which either are honors or AP, or classes that can easily get a high GPA. However there are two reasons that keep me from getting what I want. The first reason is that my ability is limited, I can’t handle if I take too much AP or honor class. Second reason is that we need to full fill the prerequisite of college, this mean that we need to take different type of class for certain years in order to get into colleges or universities.

Topic 1: The Big Questions.

If I think about PAS as an economy, and everyone at PAS as both a producer and consumer, the goods or services they produce are educations. This is because that the main products that a school produces or given is education, people come to school to learn. The people who produce the goods or services are the teachers in the school. They provide knowledge for students and educate them by teaching. How are the product produce? The teachers get their knowledge when they were in school or life experience and pass down the knowledge to students in PAS. The products, which is education is mainly produce for students. Parents send their kids to our school to let them get educated. The person who make the choices governing what, how, and for whom goods and services get produced is the head of our school which is Ms. Pamela, she controls everything and make every decisions.

One way to the choices that made at PAS about what, how, and for whom reflect different people’s self-interest is that the teachers who are producing the education to the students are in PAS is because they want money for themselves. This self-interest can also promote social interest because when teachers get money, they can buy more products. When the company sells more products because of the teachers they get more money and the whole economic can run better with more money. Same thing with students, students in PAS are because they want to go in to good college and get a better job which is self-interest. This can make our world or countries to have more human capital because students are well educated. When we have more human capital, it means that we can produce more products and get more benefits for the company which can make a country richer. This is another self-interest that reflects social interest.