Standards for Fad or Fortune

Name: Competition and Market Structure

Standard: 9

• Students will understand that: Competition among sellers usually lowers costs and prices, and encourages producers to produce what consumers are willing and able to buy. Competition among buyers increases prices and allocates goods and services to those people who are willing and able to pay the most for them.
• Students will be able to use this knowledge to: Explain how changes in the level of competition in different markets can affect price and output levels.

Name: Incentives

Standard: 4

• Students will understand that: People usually respond predictably to positive and negative incentives.
• Students will be able to use this knowledge to: Identify incentives that affect people's behavior and explain how incentives affect their own behavior.

Name: Markets and Prices

Standard: 7

• Students will understand that: Markets exist when buyers and sellers interact. This interaction determines market prices and thereby allocates scarce goods and services.
• Students will be able to use this knowledge to: Identify markets in which they have participated as a buyer and seller and describe how the interaction of all buyers and sellers influences prices. Also, predict how prices change when there is either a shortage or surplus of the product available.

Name: Role of Prices

Standard: 8

• Students will understand that: Prices send signals and provide incentives to buyers and sellers. When supply or demand changes, market prices adjust, affecting incentives.
• Students will be able to use this knowledge to: Predict how changes in factors such as consumers' tastes or producers' technology affect prices.

Name: Scarcity

Standard: 1

• Students will understand that: Productive resources are limited. Therefore, people cannot have all the goods and services they want; as a result, they must choose some things and give up others.
• Students will be able to use this knowledge to: Identify what they gain and what they give up when they make choices.

Name: Trade

Standard: 5

• Students will understand that: Voluntary exchange occurs only when all participating parties expect to gain. This is true for trade among individuals or organizations within a nation, and among individuals or organizations in different nations.
• Students will be able to use this knowledge to: Negotiate exchanges and identify the gains to themselves and others. Compare the benefits and costs of policies that alter trade barriers between nations, such as tariffs and quotas.

Name: Investing

Standard: 4

• Students will understand that: People can choose to invest some of their money in financial assets to achieve long-term financial goals, such as buying a house, funding future education, or securing retirement income. Investors receive a return on their investment in the form of income and/or growth in value of their investment over time. People can more easily achieve their financial goals by investing steadily over many years, reinvesting dividends, and capital gains to compound their returns. Investors have many choices of investments that differ in expected rates of return and risk. Riskier investments tend to earn higher long-run rates of return than lower-risk investments. Investors select investments that are consistent with their risk tolerance, and they diversify across a number of different investment choices to reduce investment risk.