Name Date

The foundations of economics

This exercise will allow students to review the nine key concepts of this course, which are:

scarcity equity change

choice economic wellbeing interdependence

efficiency sustainability intervention

Fill in the blanks in the paragraphs below using the above key concepts.
Note that some may be used more than once.

(1) ____________ of resources is a characteristic of all economies, whether rich or poor.

This forces (2) ____________ to be made, which in turn involve opportunity costs. In fact
(3) ____________ poses challenges to environmental (4) ____________ as resources must
be conserved and not degraded so that they will be available for use by future generations.

(5) ____________ of resources also gives rise to a need to achieve (6) ____________
in resource use in order to avoid resource waste. This is a key concern of the social
science of economics.

Economics is also concerned with normative issues involving (7) ____________, which is
important in improving (8) ____________ for all members of a society in order to achieve an
adequate standard of living. It is usually necessary to have government (9) ____________
in the economy in order to achieve greater (10) ____________ and (11) ____________.
There are major debates among economists on the necessary degree of (12) ____________
in markets.

Globalization has brought about increasing (13) ____________ among economic decision-
makers.

This also involves rapid (14) ____________ in the economic, political and institutional
settings of economic events.

This worksheet is from the Economics for the IB Diploma

teacher's resource by author and senior IB examiner, Ellie
Tragakes.
Find more resources at cambridge.org/education/blog