24 Economics Exit Tickets With a One-Line Answer Key

These economics exit tickets are designed for the last three minutes of class. Each asks for one decision, calculation, or causal chain, and each has a one-line answer key. Copy the prompt onto the board, collect one sentence per student, and sort the responses into ready, almost ready, and reteach.

An exit ticket is not a miniature homework assignment. If students need ten minutes or a calculator, it will not tell you what they understood from the lesson that just ended. The prompts below stay narrow on purpose.

Basic economic concepts

1. Opportunity cost. You can attend a free concert or work a shift that pays $30. If the shift is your next-best alternative and you attend the concert, what is the opportunity cost?

Answer: The $30 of earnings forgone, because opportunity cost is the value of the single next-best alternative.

2. Production possibilities. What does a point strictly inside a production possibilities curve show?

Answer: Attainable but inefficient production, with unemployed or misallocated resources.

3. Marginal decision. A choice adds $9 of benefit and $7 of additional cost. A separate $50 has already been spent and cannot be recovered. Should the choice be taken?

Answer: Yes; the marginal net benefit is $2, and the unrecoverable $50 is a sunk cost.

4. Positive or normative. Classify this statement: A binding rent ceiling creates a shortage. Then rewrite it as a normative statement.

Answer: It is positive; a normative version is, The city should accept a housing shortage in exchange for lower rents for tenants who obtain units.

Supply and demand

5. Shift or movement. The price of coffee rises and consumers buy less coffee, with everything else unchanged. Did demand shift?

Answer: No; the price change causes a movement up the existing demand curve and a decrease in quantity demanded.

6. Input cost. The price of steel falls for car producers. Which curve moves and what happens to equilibrium price and quantity?

Answer: Supply shifts right; equilibrium price falls and equilibrium quantity rises.

7. Double shift. Demand increases while supply decreases. Which equilibrium outcome is certain?

Answer: Price rises for certain, while the change in quantity is indeterminate.

8. Price ceiling. Equilibrium rent is $1,000 and the legal maximum is $800. Is the ceiling binding, and what results?

Answer: Yes; it is below equilibrium, so quantity demanded exceeds quantity supplied and a shortage results.

Elasticity and firm behavior

9. Midpoint elasticity. Price falls from $10 to $8 while quantity demanded rises from 100 to 140. Using the midpoint method, is demand elastic or inelastic?

Answer: Elastic; the percentage quantity change is 40/120, the absolute percentage price change is 2/9, and elasticity is 1.5.

10. Elasticity and revenue. In question 9, what happens to total revenue?

Answer: It rises from $1,000 to $1,120, which is consistent with a price decrease when demand is elastic.

11. Tax incidence. Supply is more inelastic than demand. Which side bears more of a per-unit tax?

Answer: Sellers bear more because the less elastic side of the market changes quantity less easily and bears more of the tax burden.

12. Monopoly price. After a monopolist finds the quantity where marginal revenue equals marginal cost, where does it find the price?

Answer: On the demand curve at that quantity; the monopolist does not set price equal to marginal cost.

Measuring the macroeconomy

13. GDP. A used car sells for $12,000 and a dealer earns a $600 service fee on the sale. How much enters current GDP?

Answer: Only the $600 current service; the used car was counted when it was originally produced.

14. Nominal and real GDP. An economy produces 100 units. The current price is $5.25 and the base-year price is $5. What are nominal GDP, real GDP, and the GDP deflator?

Answer: Nominal GDP is $525, real GDP is $500, and the deflator is 105.

15. Unemployment rate. The labor force is 500 people, with 460 employed and 40 unemployed. What is the unemployment rate?

Answer: 40 divided by 500, times 100, which equals 8 percent.

16. Inflation. A fixed basket costs $200 last year and $210 this year. What is the inflation rate?

Answer: The basket rose by $10 on a $200 base, so inflation is 5 percent.

Macroeconomic policy and graphs

17. Spending multiplier. In the simple model with no taxes or imports, the marginal propensity to consume is 0.75. What is the spending multiplier?

Answer: 1 divided by 1 minus 0.75, which equals 4.

18. Open-market purchase. In a limited-reserves money market, the central bank buys government bonds. What happens to the money supply and the nominal interest rate?

Answer: Money supply increases and the nominal interest rate falls.

19. Aggregate demand. Aggregate demand shifts left with short-run aggregate supply fixed. What happens in the short run?

Answer: The price level and real GDP fall, while cyclical unemployment rises.

20. Supply shock. Short-run aggregate supply shifts left with aggregate demand fixed. What happens?

Answer: The price level rises and real GDP falls, the combination called stagflation.

Trade and market failure

21. Comparative advantage. Country A can make 12 computers or 6 units of wheat. Country B can make 8 computers or 8 wheat. Who has comparative advantage in each good?

Answer: A in computers because its cost is 0.5 wheat per computer; B in wheat because its cost is 1 computer per wheat versus A's 2.

22. Tariff. A tariff raises the domestic price of an imported good. State one effect on domestic production, consumption, and imports.

Answer: Domestic production rises, domestic consumption falls, and imports fall.

23. Negative externality. Marginal social cost is greater than marginal private cost. Is the market quantity too high or too low?

Answer: Too high; the market ignores an external cost and produces beyond the socially efficient quantity.

24. Public good or common resource. Ocean fish are difficult to exclude people from catching, but one person's catch leaves fewer fish for others. Which type of good is this?

Answer: A common resource because it is non-excludable and rival, not a public good.

How to use the responses tomorrow

Do not score every ticket. Sort them by the decision you need to make:

• Ready: correct answer and correct reason. Move on.
• Almost ready: correct direction but weak or missing reason. Begin tomorrow with one contrast example.
• Reteach: wrong curve, denominator, or opportunity cost. Use a fresh example before adding complexity.

The reason belongs in the answer. A room that can chant supply right, price down, quantity up may still not understand that lower input costs make sellers willing to offer more at every price. One sentence exposes that gap.

For five-minute openers rather than three-minute closers, use the 40 economics bell ringers. For full timed lessons with an exit ticket already attached, use the AP Micro and Macro lesson plans.