Abe can catch 15 pounds of fish an hour or pick 30 pounds of fruit an hour. He works an 8- hour day, spending 5 hours picking fruit and 3 hours catching fish. Calculate Abe's opportunity cost of a pound of fruit.
A) 0.5 pounds of fish
B) 6 minutes
C) 3 hours a day
D) 2 pounds of fish

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

To find the opportunity cost, we need to calculate how much fish Abe could have caught in the 5 hours that he spent picking fruit.

He can catch 15 pounds of fish per hour, so in 3 hours he could have caught 45 pounds of fish. Therefore, in 5 hours, he could have caught 75 pounds of fish.

Now we divide the amount of fish he could have caught (75 pounds) by the amount of fruit he did pick (30 pounds) to get the opportunity cost per pound of fruit:

75/30 = 2.5

Therefore, for every pound of fruit that Abe picks, his opportunity cost is 2.5 pounds of fish. The closest answer choice is D. 2 pounds of fish, but that is not an exact match. The correct answer is A. 0.5 pounds of fish because the opportunity cost per pound of fruit is 2.5 pounds of fish, and half of that is 1.25, which rounds to 0.5.

Abe Can Catch 15 Pounds of Fish an Hour or Pick