Academic Vocabulary List Chapter 4
Name: ____________________
Instructions: Select 10 words you would like to study (leave blank or delete those you won’t be using). Underline the word in its context. Search Word and Phrase or the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)
to discover the most frequently occurring words before and after your chosen word. You can choose an on-line dictionary to look up the definition of the word and write it in the definition box, include the part of speech
and other forms of the word (hint: you can find a list of words and their families on the class webpage). Finally, write your own sentence using the word. (Hint: When you paste from the Internet select “Paste Special”
“unformatted text”
Word
acquire
1
approximately
2
attempt
3
benefit
4
In making such decisions, individuals weigh the values and costs of
various choices. In this context, the cost of acquiring a particular good
or taking a particular action is the highest valued alternative you
sacrifice.
While approximately half of the lakefront units sell for market rates,
prices for the remaining units are constrained far below market rates—
as low as $25 per month in some instances.
The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) manages 78 housing
developments for families and senior citizens. In an attempt to improve
public housing, the CHA approved a $1.5 billion plan in February 2000
to substantially renovate and redevelop 25,000 apartments, including
490 units in a complex along Lake Michigan.
To assess whether you have allocated your scarce resources of time and
money in the most advantageous way, you would have to look at the
costs and benefits of your college education.
conflict
The Occupy Wall Street movement no longer occupies Wall Street, but
the issue of class conflict has captured a growing share of the national
consciousness.
desire
Without a firm understanding of positive economics, the normative
judgments we make as consumers, investors, or voters may not
actually lead us to the desired outcomes.
determine
However, violence is not the common method by which individuals or
groups compete for scarce goods within a society or even on an
international scale. Rather, governments establish and enforce rules
that determine how we compete.
Yet even with income as a rationing criterion, there often remain more
people who would like to have the apartment units than there are
units available. What other rules might emerge under these
circumstances?
The above table uses a round estimate of the average earnings of a
high school graduate in the 18-24 age range.
5
6
7
emerge
8
estimate
9
existence
When we define economics as the study of individuals' behavior in a
world of scarcity, you should realize that a critical ingredient to such a
study is the existence of scarcity.
express
That is double the proportion that offered a similar view in July 2009
and the largest share expressing this opinion since the question was
first asked in 1987.
10
11
Context
Part of
Speech
Frequent
words
before
Frequent
words
after
Other
forms of
the word
Definition
Sentence
Word
failure
12
13
goal
impact
14
mean
15
model
16
outcomes
17
18
19
potential
present
prior
20
project
21
reduction
22
typical
23
value
24
within
25
Context
If you walked through the marketplace at the end of the day and saw
some farmer with unsold, rotting vegetables, you might be struck by
the failure of the market to coordinate the activities of buyers and
sellers.
Some proponents of the minimum wage favor it because they believe
it will achieve their goal of a more equal income distribution.
The goal of achieving a more equal income distribution is in the realm
of normative economics. But positive economics can be used to
determine the actual impact of the minimum wage legislation on labor
markets.
The idea of scarcity can be made more precise if we focus on a
particular good. Scarcity for a particular good means that the amount
of that good wanted at a zero cost is greater than the amount of the
good available.
The next two sections present a brief overview of the scientific
methodology of positive economics, where first we consider the role of
economic models in focusing discussions and then examine the
dilemma economists face in attempting to verify propositions that
arise from positive economic analysis.
Without a firm understanding of positive economics, the normative
judgments we make as consumers, investors, or voters may not
actually lead us to the desired outcomes.
The cost of living at home is the potential income your parents could
earn if they rented out your room!
They only know that they do not like the present level of tariffs.
About one out of five (19%) of the nation’s households owed
student debt in 2010, more than double the share two decades earlier
and a significant rise from the 15% that owed such debt in 2007, just
prior to the onset of the Great Recession, according to a Pew Research
Center analysis of newly available government data.
While societies attempt to limit this form of competition, they are not
always successful. In the Chicago public housing projects, gang violence
has forced some to relinquish apartments or whole buildings to the
control of gang leaders who have taken over vacant—or even
occupied—apartments.
For these figures to be completely correct, such a reduction should be
done, since one is paying for the education today but receiving a return
on that investment in tomorrow's dollars.
The item that most students leave off their lists is what they could have
earned in an alternative job had they not attended college. Let us look
at the cost of attending a typical large state university if you are an instate student living in the dorm.
Other examples of normative statements are: "Unemployment is too
high," “Income is not distributed equally enough," and "Interest rates
are too high." These statements involve value judgments about where
the level of unemployment, the degree of income equality, or the level
of interest rates should be.
However, violence is not the common method by which individuals or
groups compete for scarce goods within a society or even on an
international scale.
Part of
Speech
Frequent
words
before
Frequent
words
after
Other
forms of
the word
Definition
Sentence