THINKING LIKE AN ECONOMIST: THE BASIC VOCABULARY OF THE FIELD

Choosing a Firm

In this assignment for this session, you will be asked to examine the decisions of a small business owner. Since microeconomics is the study of individual households, firms, and government, we will take a closer look at the operations of a franchise firm.

You will choose ONE franchise to follow for the entire session. You can select ONE firm from a list available from Entrepreneur magazine: NOT FROM THE TOP 50

http://www.entrepreneur.com/franchises/rankings/franchise500-115608/2012,-1.html

This is ranking of the top 500 franchises in the United States. Please pick only ONE firm from here.

For this first assignment, lets take a closer look at the firm of your choice in the context of what you are learning in this assignment. Write a 2 page paper on the following issues:

What firm did you pick?

Why is it interesting to you?

Define positive and normative statements.

Give one example of each type of statement that applies to your firm.

Think about the three fundamental questions in economics (see Chapter 1 in background reading). Apply each question to your firm.

List the three factors of production and explain if and how they are used by your firm.