Slope of the budget line and the opportunity cost

Question

Consider someone won $15 on a Lotto Canada ticket at the local 7-Eleven & decided to spend all the winnings on bags of peanuts and candy bars. The cost of candy bars is estimated as $.75 and the cost of peanuts is $1.50. Plot the data in this table as a budget line in a graph. Explain the slope of the budget line and the opportunity cost of one more candy bar? Of one more bag of peanuts? Do these opportunity costs increase, fall, or remain constant as each added unit of the product is purchased.

Answer 1

The slope for the budget line above, along with candy bars on the horizontal axis, is -0.5 (= -Pcb/Pbp). Note down that the figure could also be drawn along with bags of peanuts on the horizontal axis. The slope of budget line would be -2. The opportunity cost of one more candy bar will be ½ of a bag of peanuts. The opportunity cost of one more bag of peanuts will be 2 candy bars. These costs are constant. They can be found through comparing any two of the consumption option for the two goods.