Economics

• Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
• Lessons for the Young Economist by Robert Murphy
• Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know about Wealth and Prosperity by James D. Gwartney, Richard L. Stroup and Dwight Lee     
• Economics for Real People by Gene Callahan 
• How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes by Peter Schiff     

 

Entrepreneurship

• School for Startups: The Breakthrough Course for Guaranteeing Small Business Success in 90 Days or Less by Jim Beach and Chris Hanks
• The Entrepreneur Mind: 100 Essential Beliefs, Characteristics, and Habits of Elite Entrepreneurs by Kevin Johnson       
• Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain from Gangster to Multimillionaire by Ryan Blair          
• The Startup Guide: Building A Better World Through Entrepreneurship by Ryan Allis
• Start Small, Finish Big: Fifteen Key Lessons to Start--and Run--your Own Successful Business by Fred DeLuca

 

Success

• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Raising Money Smart Kids: What They Need to Know about Money and How to Tell Them by Janet Bodnar
• Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T Kiyosaki
• Rich Dad’s Rich Kid by Robert T Kiyosaki
• The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko
• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey
• Do Hard Things by Alex Harris

 

Appendix B – Related National Standards

 

Council for Economic Education’s National Standards for Economics

 

Standard 1: Scarcity - 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.

Standard 2: Decision Making - Effective decision making requires comparing the additional costs of alternatives with the additional benefits. Many choices involve doing a little more or a little less of something: few choices are “all or nothing” decisions.

Standard 3: Allocation - Different methods can be used to allocate goods and services. People acting individually or collectively must choose which methods to use to allocate different kinds of goods and services.

Standard 4: Incentives - People usually respond predictably to positive and negative incentives.

Standard 5: Trade - 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.

Standard 6: Specialization - When individuals, regions, and nations specialize in what they can produce at the lowest cost and then trade with others, both production and consumption increase.

Standard 7: Markets and Prices - A market exists when buyers and sellers interact. This interaction determines market prices and thereby allocates scarce goods and services.

Standard 8: Role of Prices - Prices send signals and provide incentives to buyers and sellers. When supply or demand changes, market prices adjust, affecting incentives.

Standard 9 Competition and Market Structure - 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.

Standard 10: Institutions - Institutions evolve and are created to help individuals and groups accomplish their goals. Banks, labor unions, markets, corporations, legal systems, and not-for-profit organizations are examples of important institutions. A different kind of institution, clearly defined and enforced property rights, is essential to a market economy.

Standard 13: Income - Income for most people is determined by the market value of the productive resources they sell. What workers earn primarily depends on the market value of what they produce.

Standard 14: Entrepreneurship - Entrepreneurs take on the calculated risk of starting new businesses, either by embarking on new ventures similar to existing ones or by introducing new innovations. Entrepreneurial innovation is an important source of economic growth.

Standard 15: Economic Growth - Investment in factories, machinery, new technology, and in the health, education, and training of people stimulates economic growth and can raise future standards of living.

 

Glossary of Terms

 

Absolute Advantage - The ability to produce more units of a good or service than some other producer, using the same quantity of resources

Barter - Trading a good or service directly for another good or service, without using money or credit. For example, trading a pencil for a piece of paper.

Benefits - Monetary or non-monetary gain received because of an action taken or a decision made

Business - Any organization that produces or exchanges goods or services for a profit

Business Ethics – Application of moral standards that govern professional conduct

Business Model - A high-level, easy to understand description of a business idea that provides an overview of how the business functions.

Business Plan - A detailed description of an enterprise, including its name, its goals and objectives, the products sold and distributed, the work skills needed to produce these products, and the marketing strategies used to promote them

Capital - Man-made goods used in the production of other goods (e.g. machinery, tools, factories)

Character - The nature of an individual's moral personality, derived from his rooted, chosen moral values which are consistently applied and expressed by his behavior and actions.

Choice - Decision made or course of action taken when faced with a set of alternatives

Civil Society - The complex web of voluntary and familial relationships and associations found within a society; the aggregate of non-governmental organizations and institutions. Examples include the Boy and Girl Scouts, religious organizations, the Red Cross, and fraternal organizations.

Classical Liberalism - A political ideology that holds liberty as the primary political value; advocates for rule of law, civil society, private property rights, and free markets; and promotes toleration, peace, individualism, and limited government.

Comparative Advantage - The ability to produce a good or service at a lower opportunity cost than some other producer. To find people's comparative advantages, do not compare their absolute advantages. Compare their opportunity costs. For example, the best brain surgeon in town may also be the best and fastest typist in town but that doesn’t mean he’ll type up his own invoices; he has an absolute advantage in both brain surgery and typing but a comparative advantage only in brain surgery. For him to give up some brain surgery time to type invoices would be a very costly endeavor.

Competition - Attempts by two or more individuals or organizations to acquire the same goods, services or productive and financial resources. Consumers compete with other consumers for goods and services. Producers compete with other producers for consumers

Cooperation - The act of voluntarily working or acting together for mutual benefit

Cost - An amount that must be paid, spent, or given up in order to achieve or obtain something

 

 

Creative Destruction - The process through which the introduction of new, improved products or processes results in the obsolescence of existing ones.

Customers - People who buy goods or services from a business

Decisions at the Margin - weighing the costs and benefits of acquiring one additional (or one fewer) unit of a good or service and then deciding to acquire one additional (or one fewer) unit

Distribution Model - A businesses strategy and processes of getting a product or service to the customer.

Division of Labor - An arrangement in which workers perform only one step or a few specialized steps in a larger production process

Entrepreneur - Someone who is able to discover and provide for an unmet need and in doing so, creates value for themselves and others in society

Factors of Production - Productive resources; what is required to produce the goods and services that people want; natural resources, human resources, capital goods. Some consider entrepreneurship a factor of production

Freedom – The ability to act in the absence of externally imposed restraints, obstacles, or threats, as long as one does no harm to the rights or property of others.

Gains from Trade - The net benefits to an individual, business or country from entering into voluntary trade

Incentives - Things that motive a person to act in a certain way; they can either be positive (a reward or benefit) or negative (a punishment or harm)

Innovation - The process of devising a new idea or thing, or improving an existing idea or thing

Institutions - Set of understood regulations or principles governing conduct within a particular activity or sphere; rules of the game (e.g. laws, cultural customs, and societal norms)

Integrity - The practice of consistently acting on one's beliefs about what is true and good/right

Intrinsic Value - The value that an object has "in itself" or "for its own sake", based on its inherent properties

Invisible Hand - A figure of speech representing the idea that individuals making decisions in their own self-interest will at the same time create economic order and promote society's interests; coined by Adam Smith

Jobs - Work performed on order at an agreed-upon rate. Also a paid position of regular employment

Labor - The physical and mental human effort used in production

Labor Theory of Value - An economic theory that supposes the value of a good or service is based on the amount of labor used in its production

Land - The natural resources used in the creation of products

Loss - Financial loss or damage suffered by a person or a company

Marginal Benefit - The additional gain from consuming or producing one more unit of a good or service; can be measured in monetary or psychological gain

 

Marginal Cost - The increase in a producer's total cost when it increases its output by one unit

Marginal Utility - The extra value or satisfaction that a consumer obtains from consuming one additional unit of something

Market Process - The constant and ever-changing circumstances resulting from the sum of voluntary exchanges between free people

Market - The sum of voluntary exchanges between free people

Objective Value - Value that is independent of the beliefs and perceptions of an individual observer

Opportunity Cost - The value of the next-best alternative (the highest-valued option not chosen)

Positive Sum Game - A situation in which the sum of the gains and losses are greater than zero

Prices - The amount of money that people pay when they buy a good or service; the amount they receive when they sell a good or service

Profit - Revenues minus costs

Property Rights - A bundle of rights and corresponding obligations associated with control of a given resource, including; the authority to control the usage, adaptation, receipt of benefits from, exchange, and disposition of the resource.

Protectionism - Government-imposed economic barriers to free trade, such as tariffs, quotas and subsidies designed to benefit native industries/businesses

Risk - The chance of economic gain or loss in which the full range of possible outcomes are known and reasonable probabilities to the occurrence of each can be made

Scarcity - The condition that exists because human wants exceed the capacity of available resources to satisfy those wants; insufficient resources to achieve the desired ends

Shareholder - Are a company's owners. They hold "shares," or equal parts, of a company.

Specialization - When individuals, companies, or countries focus production on the things they can produce with the lowest (opportunity) costs

Spontaneous Order - A seemingly logical order that emerges in absence of the deliberate design or rational plan of anyone one person or persons. Order that emerges as individuals pursue their own self-interests and follow their own plans

Stakeholder - people with an interest, concern, or stake in the business. Stakeholders include employees, customers, suppliers, investors, and the community.

Subjective Value - Value is determined not by inherent qualities, but rather by the beliefs, preferences, and needs of an individual. Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, not in the thing itself. It’s subjective and personal and often changes from one day to the next. What’s of value to you may not be valuable to another.

 

Subsidy - Government payments to private industry designed to encourage production of a good or service. Subsidies are supposed to lower the costs of production but in practice encourage inefficient behavior and gives unfair advantages to politically connected companies

Sunk Costs - Sunk costs refer to costs incurred in the past that cannot be recovered.

Taxation - The coercive extraction of resources by government from individuals and organizations that produce value

Things Seen and Unseen - In the economic sphere an act, habit, institution or law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate, it appears simultaneously with its cause and it is seen. The other effects emerge subsequently and they are unseen

Trade - The exchange of goods or services for money or other goods and services

Tradeoffs - The giving up of one benefit or advantage in order to gain another regarded as more favorable

Unintended Consequences - The actions of people, business and government always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended

Value - The worth or usefulness of a good or service.

Virtue - Action-guiding character traits and commitments that aim at positive results; good character in action

Wealth - A measure of the value of all the assets of worth owned by a person, community, company or country

Zero Sum Game - A situation in which one person's gain is equivalent to another's loss, so the net change in wealth or loss is zero.