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The lump of labor fallacy holds that there is a fixed amount of work to be done, which determines the number of jobs in an economy. If this were true, new jobs could not be generated, just reallocated.

En este episodio de la serie de vídeos Economic Lowdown, la especialista en educación económica Andrea Caceres- Santamaria explica el modelo de flujo circular.

PR’s Planet Money is a podcast about the economy for people who think they aren’t interested in economics. Over 10 years and more than 1,000 episodes, the podcast has drawn millions of regular listeners through humor, storytelling and an accessible style.

It is widely accepted within the study of history that cotton played a crucial role in the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Saving the Environment with Economic Ideas is a set of lessons for high school that provide students with the opportunity to participate in simulations. These simulations demonstrate the potential results of economic-related actions and policies taken and made by the government, businesses, or individuals to conserve and protect many of the natural resources used in the production and consumption of goods and services. Students see in action concepts such as resource allocation, scarcity, value, property rights, negative externalities, and emissions taxes and are encouraged to have lively discussions about what they observe and apply it in various situations. Engaging students in hands-on simulations and application of real environmental concerns helps students learn and analyze how economics plays a significant role in developing ideas and solutions that are put into action to save the environment.

Seas, Trees, and Economies is a set of lessons for students in middle grades—grades 6-8. These lessons are written to help students understand the relationship between our natural environment and the economy as well as to describe how the environment and the economy jointly provide us with the goods and services that we want. The lessons provide students with the tools they need to recognize the fundamental trade-offs, to explain how and why choices are made, and to explain how people can make better choices regarding the use of natural resources and the disposal of wastes that production and consumption unavoidably create. Most lessons employ simulations and other active-learning strategies to engage students in the learning process and to provide experiences to help them discover why things happen as they do.

In this lesson, students work in small groups to produce a toy that can be sold at a price of $5.00. Students track the costs of production for the toy. They then demonstrate the toy and take orders from their classmates. Using the number of orders (quantity demanded), students calculate their total revenue and then either their profit or loss.

App-driven jobs allow workers to decide when, where, and how much to work—one “gig” at a time. Learn more about this new employment trend in the January 2019 issue of Page One Economics.

Students listen to Stuart J. Murphy’s “Lemonade for Sale” and learn about children who use different types of resources to produce and sell lemonade to reach their savings goal: a clubhouse. In this lesson, students get to make their own product and name the kinds of resources used for production. Extension activities are included to integrate graphing for mathematics and advertisements for language arts skills.

We participate in the economy every day, but the economic models developed to illustrate our activities can be difficult to remember. This circular flow model infographic and activity introduces students to this relationship.