Economics 2018 Jamb Examination

A joint stock company is legally recognised as a separate entity from its owners, and company law typically prescribes a minimum number of shareholders to ensure broad ownership.
The statutory minimum for forming a public joint stock company is seven shareholders. This requirement ensures proper dispersion of ownership and reduces concentrated control.
The value seven is therefore the benchmark used for legally establishing such companies.

A perfectly inelastic supply curve is vertical, meaning quantity supplied is fixed regardless of price.
When demand shifts rightward, buyers are willing to purchase more at every price level, but because supply cannot expand, only the equilibrium price rises while equilibrium quantity remains unchanged.
This situation results strictly in a price increase, making the rise in price the only possible adjustment.

Every economy faces the foundational problem of scarcity, which forces societies to decide what goods to produce, the methods of producing them, and the intended consumers of these goods.
This trio of questions represents the classical economic problem arising from limited resources and unlimited wants.
The combination of "what, how and for whom" comprehensively captures these fundamental concerns.

Gross National Product (GNP) measures the total income earned by a country's residents, including income from abroad.
In an open economy, national expenditure includes consumption (C), investment (I), government spending (G), and net exports (X − M).
The inclusion of net exports reflects international trade and ensures the accounting captures external economic interactions.

Productivity in developing economies is typically assessed by tracking the growth rate of output over time.
This measure reflects how efficiently resources are being used to expand production and indicates improvements in technology, skills and capital utilisation.
The output growth rate therefore provides a broad view of productive performance in emerging economies.

A scale of preference ranks wants in order of importance because resources are insufficient to satisfy all human wants.
Scarcity forces individuals and societies to make choices, prioritising the most pressing needs first while postponing others.
This makes a scale of preference essential for rational decision-making under limited resources.

Privatisation involves transferring ownership of state enterprises to private individuals or organisations.
This shift reduces direct government control and allows market forces to allocate resources more freely.
A system where private ownership and market competition dominate decisions is characteristic of a market economy, aligning privatisation directly with this model.

The arithmetic mean represents the balancing point of a distribution, meaning the sum of deviations from the mean equals zero.
This property makes it mathematically stable and useful for further statistical calculations.
Because of this equilibrium characteristic, it is preferred when data are complete and continuous.

Average revenue equals total revenue divided by quantity sold.
For 6 men, total product = 660 units. Price per unit = N2.
Total revenue = 660 × 2 = N1320.
Average revenue is therefore calculated as:\[ \text{AR} = \dfrac{1320}{12} = 110 \]This gives an average revenue value of N110.

A shift from a lower production possibility curve (I) to a higher one (II) indicates an outward movement of the entire frontier.
This outward shift represents an overall increase in productive capacity due to improved utilisation of resources or technological progress.
The interpretation aligns with an economy moving from unemployment or underutilisation of resources toward full employment and maximum efficiency.