New Hampshire Social Curriculum Frameworks

Introduction  Broad Goals  Civics and Government  Economics  Geography  History 

Economics

  Curriculum Standard 5

• Distinguish between economic needs and wants.
  
  
• Give examples that show how scarcity and choice govern economic decisions.
  
  
• Explain, by using examples, that since few economic choices are all-or-nothing propositions they usually involve trade-offs.
  
  
• Explain that individuals and households undertake a variety of activities, including producing, consuming, saving, and investing, in order to satisfy their economic needs and wants.
  
  
• Explain that making effective economic choices requires a comparison of the cost of a given resource with the benefits gained by its acquisition.

• Describe how economic choices made by producers and consumers are based on supply, demand, and access to markets.
  
  
• Explain how market systems influence the production and distribution of goods and services.
  
  
• Discuss, using historical and contemporary examples, how individuals, governments, and societies experience and respond to scarcity.
  
  
• Explain how incentives, worth, usefulness, traditions, and habits influence economic decisions made by individuals, households, businesses, and government.
  
  
• Analyze how changes in technology, costs, and demand interact in competitive markets to determine or change the price of goods and services.

  Curriculum Standard 6

• Explain, by using examples, that productivity is measured in terms of output (goods and services) produced per unit of input (productive resources) over some period of time.
  
  
• Explain, by using examples, the difference between private and public goods and services.
  
  
• Describe how economic systems depend upon workers with specialized jobs.
  
  
• Demonstrate the use of barter and money in everyday settings.
  
  
• Explain how barter and money are used in market economies to facilitate the exchange of resources, goods, and services.
  
  
• Identify and discuss the roles played by banks, stock and commodity markets, and other financial institutions in market economies.
  
  
• Describe how supply, demand, and competition affect prices in market economies.

• Describe and analyze the role that supply and demand, prices, incentives, and profits play in determining what is produced and distributed in market economies.
  
  
• Explain, by using examples, how goods and services are produced and distributed in market economies.
  
  
• Discuss the ways that specialization contributes to and influences the production and exchange of goods and services.
  
  
• Analyze how technological development, entrepreneurship, and investments in productive resources, including natural resources, capital, and human resources (labor), affect productivity.
  
  
• Describe the differences among various forms of exchange, including barter and purchase, and various forms of money including currency, checks, and credit.
  
  
• Describe and analyze how governments create money; how governmental taxation, spending, regulation, and intervention affect the functioning of market economies; and how governments deal with market failures.
  
  
• Discuss how individuals, as consumers, buy goods and services from firms and, as workers, sell productive resources or lend their savings to other individuals or firms (circular flow).
  
  
• Compare the advantages and disadvantages of proprietorships, partnerships, and corporations including the raising of capital; levels of liability; tax advantages; profit levels; and risk spreading.
  
  
• Explain how the economy functions as a whole including the causes and effects of inflation, unemployment, business cycles, fluctuations in interest rates and market prices, and monetary and fiscal policies.

  Curriculum Standard 7

• Explain, by giving examples, the economic role played by various institutions including households, workers, banks, labor unions, government agencies, small and large businesses, and corporations.
  
  
• Explain, by using examples, that the strategies employed to satisfy needs and wants vary in different economic systems.
  
  
• Identify and compare basic economic systems--traditional, command, and market--according to who determines what goods and services are produced, distributed, exchanged, and consumed.

• Explain that the scarcity of productive resources--human, capital, technological, and natural--requires the development of economic systems to make decisions about the production and distribution of goods and services.
  
  
• Compare basic economic systems according to how rules and procedures deal with demand, supply, prices, savings, investments, and capital.
  
  
• Discuss how wages and prices are determined in traditional, command, and market economies.
  
  
• Discuss how, in different economic systems, the means of production, distribution, and exchange are related to culture, resources, and technologies.
  
  
• Describe and discuss the role of government, banks, labor and labor unions, in different economic systems.
  
  
• Illustrate, by using examples, that today virtually all countries, including the United States, use a mixed-market system having some features of traditional, command, and market economies, and that the mix varies from one country to another.
  
  
• Analyze and discuss, using historical and contemporary examples, the national and international consequences and opportunities resulting from the transition of a non-market to a market economy.

  Curriculum Standard 8

• Explain how international trade links countries around the world and how such trade influences the economic welfare of nations.
  
  
• Identify the major goods and services produced in New Hampshire and the United States including those goods and services that are exported to other nations.
  
  
• Identify those goods and services that New Hampshire and the United States import from other nations.
  
  
• Discuss how the exchange of goods and services around the world has created economic interdependence between and among people in different places.

• Compare how traditions and habits influence economic decisions, including trade policies, in different societies.
  
  
• Discuss, using contemporary examples, how the uneven quantity and quality of productive resources available to nations around the world promotes specialization, creates international trade, and increases total world output.
  
  
• Explain that extensive international trade requires an organized system for exchanging money between nations.
  
  
• Analyze how governmental policies influence the level of free or restricted trade in the world marketplace.
  
  
• Analyze how the distribution of the world's natural resources, political stability, national efforts to encourage or discourage trade, and the flow of investments affect the pattern of international trade.

  Curriculum Standard 9.

• Discuss how to use economic knowledge effectively in educational and everyday settings.
  
  
• Describe, using a specific example such as a school-based yard sale, the application of economic concepts, including scarcity, supply and demand, prices, incentives, and profit, in deciding what items to sell; how much to ask for each item; how to advertise and conduct the sale; and how to evaluate its success.
  
  
• Explain the relationships among spending, saving, investing, borrowing, and budgeting.

• Apply knowledge of economic concepts in evaluating historical issues, policies, and events.
  
  
• Employ economic concepts to develop a response to a current economic issue.
  
  
• Analyze, using case studies, the impact of sound economic decision making on the long-term financial success of individuals, enterprises, institutions, and government.
  
  
• Apply economic knowledge and concepts in identifying and analyzing the requirements for effective participation in the workplace, the marketplace, and civic life.
  
  
• Discuss, using examples, how economic decisions may impact the environment and how environmental decisions may impact the economy.
  
  
• Prepare a business plan for a new local enterprise and identify productive resources needed for success (for example, entrepreneurial leadership).
  
  
• Create a personal financial plan that identifies goals, contains a step-by-step process for reaching those goals, and predicts the future consequences of money-management decisions.