Question

Suppose the United States can produce either 90 apples and 20 oranges or 80 apples and 30 oranges. What is the opportunity cost of producing 1 apple?

Answer 1

Answer: The opportunity cost of producing 1 apple will be 1 orange.

Explanation:

Opportunity cost is defined as the loss or cost of another alternative when another alternative is being chosen by an economic agent.

In this scenario, the opportunity cost of producing every additional apple will be 1 orange due to the fact that as there's an increase in the production of apple from 80 to 90, there'll be a reduction in the production of orange from 30 to 20.

This indicates that for the increase of 10 apples, there's a reduction of 10 oranges which implies that an increase of 1 apple brings about a reduction by 1 orange.