Each selection you make demands you to give some thing up. Whenever you sit down to read this post, you've got chosen not to do at least a thousand other issues together with your time. You could have read your English text, you could have watched tv, you could have slept, you could have gone to the movies, and so on. Therefore, scarcity of time has led you to pick to read this rather than do some thing else which is presumably of less value. The some thing else which you chose not to do is the cost associated with spending time reading this article. Economists call it opportunity cost.
Let's assume that of all the other items you could have performed as an alternative to reading this write-up, the factor you most wanted to do, but didn't do, was watch tv. If that's the case, then the value of the enjoyment you would have received from watching television is your opportunity price of reading this post. Chance cost is defined as the value of a second-best choice that is given up when an initial choice is taken. Opportunity cost is an unavoidable component of all decisions buyers make. It helps us place a value on the scarce resources that go into producing breakout items that satisfy our wants.
Whatever you do, you are "trading off" 1 use of a resource for 1 or more option uses. The value of a tradeoff is represented by the opportunity price just discussed. Let's go back to the opportunity price of reading this article. Assume that you have a maximum of ten hours per week to spend studying just two subjects, consumer economics and accounting. The much more time you study consumer economics, you believe the greater your grade will probably be in this subject. The corresponding confluence is accurate for accounting. There's a tradeoff, then, between spending an hour reading this write-up and spending that time studying accounting. A far better grade in consumer economics must be purchased at the expense of a lower grade in accounting.
Comparable tradeoffs happen for each choice you make. If you determine to join your school's basketball team, you have to trade the value of other uses of your time for the value of the enjoyment received from participating in that sport. Whenever businesses, the government, or folks in other nations make alternatives, they also make tradeoffs in which an chance price is paid for the option that's created.