opportunity cost
What you sacrifice
Opportunity cost is what you give up by choosing one option over another.
If you spend Saturday working overtime, the opportunity cost might be time with family or rest.
The concept is central to economics: every choice involves trade-offs, and the true cost of anything includes the next-best alternative you didn't take.
The opportunity cost of going to graduate school includes three years of lost salary.
Exchange requiring sacrifice
- scarcityInsufficiency of something needed
- resource allocationAssigning available means strategically
- comparative advantageLowest opportunity cost production
- budget constraintMaximum allowable expenditure
microeconomics · utility · efficiency · incentive · counterfactual · rational choice · optimization · diminishing returns
Exchange requiring sacrifice
- compromiseAgreement through mutual sacrifice
- concessionYielding a point
- giving upChoosing to stop trying
- renunciationFormal surrender of claim
forfeit · relinquishment · deferment · self-denial · exchange · substitution · displacement
Act of selecting
- alternativeAnother available choice
- optionAvailable course of action
- crossroadsMeeting of routes
- fork in the roadWhere a road divides
prioritization · weighing · deliberation · evaluation · selection · judgment · consideration · either-or
trade-off
Exchange requiring sacrifice
- scarcityInsufficiency of something needed
- resource allocationAssigning available means strategically
- comparative advantageLowest opportunity cost production
budget constraint · microeconomics · utility · efficiency · incentive · counterfactual · rational choice · optimization · diminishing returns · decision theory
trade-off
Exchange requiring sacrifice
- compromiseAgreement through mutual sacrifice
- concessionYielding a point
- giving upChoosing to stop trying
renunciation · forfeit · relinquishment · deferment · self-denial · exchange · substitution · displacement
unrealized potential
- road not takenPath deliberately avoided
- next best alternative
choice
Act of selecting
- alternativeAnother available choice
- optionAvailable course of action
- crossroadsMeeting of routes
fork in the road · prioritization · weighing · deliberation · evaluation · selection · judgment · consideration · either-or · allocation
- economicssupply and demand, inflation, GDP, GNP, gross domestic product
- strategystrategy, grand strategy, tactics, tactic, tactical
- tradeoffstradeoff, compromise, risk-reward, give-and-take, quid pro quo
- economics termsgoods, value, services, GDP, products
- microeconomicsdemand, supply, supply and demand, price, market
- costsoverhead
cost, opportunity, opportunist, inopportune, opportunities, opportunistic, opportunism, opportunists, inopportunely