Exam 32: Building Theories to Explain Everyday Life From Observations to Questions to Theories to Predictions

A theory predicts that the more a student studies, the higher his or her grades will be. This theory is

Which of the following can a homebuyer pay for indirectly when purchasing a home?

A person tends to be ______________ likely to lose her temper with a boss than with a friend because the opportunity cost of losing her temper with her boss tends to be _____________ than the opportunity cost of losing her temper with her friend.

There is no difference between building a theory and evaluating a theory.

Adrian reads about two theories, A and B. Theory A seems wrong to Adrian and theory B seems correct to Adrian. It follows that

Which of the following theories is not falsifiable or refutable?

House A has an ocean view and House B does not. In all other respects, the two houses are the same. The market price of house A is $2,800,000; the market price of house B is $2,600,000. The ocean view is therefore valued at

Which of the following is not a prediction of the theory on baseball caps and cheating?

Suppose you go to a high school and identify groups of students sitting at different lunch tables. To you it appears that everyone on the football team sits at one table, everyone who gets really high grades sits at another table, everyone who is in the drama club sits at another table, and so on. This outcome could be

Which of the following is inconsistent with the burglary crime model presented in the textbook?

A man moves from a large city to a small town. In the small town he seems like a very different person than the person he was in the big city. For instance, he is more polite in the small town than he was in the big city. This could be because

The gap between the higher equilibrium tuition and lower student tuition is $4,000 at university A and $10,000 at university B. It follows that

George is a gift giver and Roger is a gift recipient. George has Roger in his utility function, but Roger does not have George in his utility function. Roger may try to get George to __________________ George's efficient number of gifts to (give).

A person who lives in a good-climate city says, "It's expensive to live here, but at least the climate is free." In terms of a theory advanced in the textbook, this person has either forgotten or is unaware that

If a theory can predict those things that you should observe if it is right and can also predict those things that you should observe if it is wrong, it is said to have the virtue of falsifiability.

To an economist, it is preferable to

Those who say that economics is becoming an increasingly imperialist social science are suggesting that economics is

Situation 32-1 Suppose that the equation that represents the expected benefits of burglary for a given prospective criminal is as follows: ​ EB = P_s x Loot The criminal's cost equation is as follows: EC = [P_p x (I + F)] + AC Where: EB is the expected benefits of burglary P_s is the probability of successfully burglarizing a house Loot is the dollar take from the burglary EC is the expected costs of burglary P_p is the probability of imprisonment I is the income the criminal gives up if caught and imprisoned F is the dollar value the criminal puts on freedom AC is the anguish cost of committing a burglary ​ ​ -Refer to Situation 32-1. If the prospective criminal sets the following values: ​ P_s = 50 percent Loot = $30,000 P_p = 10 percent I = $10,000 F = $25,000 AC = $5,000 ​ The prospective criminal's expected benefit from committing the burglary is ______________ and his expected cost of committing the burglary is _______________. Economic theory tells us that under these circumstances, the prospective criminal ______________ commit the burglary.

Economists often evaluate a theory in terms of how consistently and accurately it predicts what happens. Implicit in this position is the belief that

The ______________ the gap between the tuition a college student pays and the equilibrium tuition for that college, the _____________ likely the student's instructors will be on time and attentive during their office hours.