Economics 2019 Jamb Examination

Secondary production involves the transformation of raw materials into finished or semi-finished goods through manufacturing and construction processes.
A bricklayer is involved in construction, which is part of secondary production.
An automobile assembly-line worker is also involved in manufacturing, another aspect of secondary production.
An accountant and a cinema projectionist belong to the tertiary sector because they provide services rather than manufacture goods.
The individuals who fit secondary production are therefore the bricklayer and the assembly-line worker.

Capital formation represents the portion of production that is not consumed but set aside for investment. It is the surplus available after meeting consumption needs.
Mathematically, it is expressed as production minus consumption because only what remains after consumption can be used to accumulate capital.
This aligns with the standard macroeconomic identity for capital formation.

A firm compares the wage rate to the average revenue product (ARP) of labour to determine profitability.
When the wage rate is less than ARP, the labour employed generates more revenue than it costs, leaving the firm with extra earnings above normal profit.
This surplus is referred to as supernormal profit because the firm retains additional gains after covering all factor costs.

In competitive labour markets, wages are primarily determined by the forces of demand and supply.
The demand for labour comes from employers seeking workers, while the supply of labour comes from individuals offering their services.
The equilibrium wage is established at the point where these two forces intersect, making the interaction between demand and supply the fundamental determinant.

Perfectly elastic demand means consumers will only buy the product at a fixed price and will stop buying if the price increases at all.
Therefore, producers cannot pass any part of a tax onto buyers because even a slight increase in price would eliminate demand.
As a result, sellers must bear the entire tax burden to keep the price unchanged and maintain sales.

A dead-weight debt refers to public debt that does not result in the creation of real assets or productive investment.
Such debt is incurred mainly to finance consumption rather than development projects, meaning it is not backed by tangible assets capable of generating returns.
This makes option D the correct description of dead-weight national debt.

Industrial location theory holds that firms choose locations that maximise benefits while minimising costs.
This includes factors such as transport costs, access to raw materials, labour availability, market proximity, and economies of scale.
The guiding principle is the balance between relative costs and benefits, which ensures optimal production efficiency.

External economies are cost advantages that firms experience due to the growth of an industry within a particular region, not from their internal actions.
Such benefits include improved infrastructure, development of skilled labour pools, and specialised suppliers, all linked to industrial localisation.
The clustering of firms within an area is the main source of these shared external benefits.

A birth rate of 8.0 means 8 births per 1000 population in a given year.
For a population of 10 million, the number of births is calculated as:\[ 8 \times 10,000 = 80,000 \]Thus, the birth rate corresponds to 80,000 live births for that year.

Terms of trade measure the relative price of exports to imports, expressed as:\[ \text{Terms of Trade} = \dfrac{\text{Export Price Index}}{\text{Import Price Index}} \times 100 \]Substituting the values:\[ \dfrac{106}{102} \times 100 \approx 103.92 \]Rounded to the nearest whole number, the result is 104.