Exam 19: Building Theories to Explain Everyday Life: From Observations to Questions to Theories to Predictions

To an economist, it is preferable to

Theory B predicts that everything that happens, happens for a reason - although we may not know what the reason is.  This theory

Smith drives his car numerous places.  Sometimes he drives his car around his residential neighborhood and sometimes he drives it on the highway.  Occasionally, Smith gets peeved with the way other people drive and makes a rude gesture to them.  Based on one of the theories discussed in the textbook, he is

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

A theory predicts that all swans are white.  A thousand people go out into the field and identify the color of the swans they see.  Their results reveal that, of the 10,000 swans they saw, all were white.  It follows that

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.

Universities A and B are substitutes in the minds of many college students.  Initially the student tuition at each university is the same and far below the equilibrium tuition.  Then, the tuition at A is raised and B is not.  As a result of a rising tuition at A, some students who would have applied and enrolled in A, apply to B instead.  Based on the logic presented in one of the theories discussed in the textbook, we would expect that

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

A gift-giver's efficient number of gifts (to give to a gift-recipient)has fallen from 10 to 8.  This could be because

In general, a dry cleaner in a small town is ______________ likely to be unethical in his business practices than a dry cleaner in a large city.  This is because the larger a percentage of the population one person is, the _____________likely that person will have to further engage with people he encounters.

For every gift that A gives to B from the first to the tenth gift, A receives a net benefit of $10.  The additional cost to A of giving an additional gift is constant at $5.  It follows that A's marginal benefit curve for giving gifts to B is ___________________  (assuming that we place "marginal benefits" on the vertical axis and "number of gifts" on the horizontal axis).

Anna gives Billy a gift of $200.  We can be sure that Billy will

When a home is located in a city with a reputation for _________ weather, homebuyers in the area _____________________ for their homes because of that weather,  ceteris paribus .

People sometimes act differently in different settings.  An economist is likely to explain this by saying

The _________________ the opportunity cost of bad behavior, __________________________.

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

If a theory gives a scientist results that she does not want, then she should not believe in that theory.

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

For economic imperialists, economics is more of a method of analysis than a specific field of study.

Scientists prefer to advance irrefutable theories, rather than refutable theories.