Chapter 4: Supporting Details
Lab Activity 20: Creating a Summary Using Headings and Content Words
 
Objective:
To create a summary by using headings and content words.

arrow.gifStep 2: Read the following passage, which continues from the college economics textbook Foundations of Microeconomics.

Negative Consumption Externalities

1     Negative consumption externalities are a source of irritation for most of us. Smoking tobacco in a confined space creates fumes that many people find unpleasant and that pose a health risk. So smoking in restaurants and on airplanes generates a negative externality. To avoid this negative externality, many restaurants and all airlines ban smoking. But while a smoking ban avoids a negative consumption externality for most people, it imposes a negative consumption externality on smokers. The majority, for whom the ban is in place, impose a cost on the minority-the smokers who would prefer to enjoy the consumption of tobacco while dining or taking a plane trip.

2     Noisy parties and outdoor rock concerts are other examples of negative consumption externalities. And they are also examples of the fact that a simple ban on an activity is not a solution. Banning noisy parties avoids the external cost on sleep-seeking neighbors, but it results in the sleepers imposing an external cost on the fun-seeking partygoers.

3     Permitting dandelions to grow in lawns, not picking up leaves in the fall, allowing a dog to bark loudly or to foul a neighbor's lawn, and letting your cell phone ring in class are other examples of negative consumption externalities.

Positive Consumption Externalities

4     When you get a flu vaccination, you lower your risk of being infected during the winter. But if you avoid the flu, your neighbor, who didn't get vaccinated, has a better chance of remaining healthy. Flu vaccinations generate positive consumption externalities.

5     When its owner restores a historic building, everyone who sees the building gets pleasure from it. Similarly, when someone erects a spectacular home-such as those built by Frank Lloyd Wright during the 1920s and 1930s-or other exciting building-such as the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings in New York or the Wrigley Building in Chicago-an external consumption benefit flows to everyone who has an opportunity to view it.

—Bade & Parkin, Foundations of Microeconomics, 2/e, p.209.

Fill in the blanks to complete the summary statements about the passage.


     

 

     

 

     

 

     

 

     

 






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