Class, please go to your textbook's "Companion Website" listed below. Read the two passages below "Flying the Friendly Skies? Match the highlighed vocabulary words in the passages with their correct definitions or examples. Print and bring to class on Friday, 10/2/09.
D.Westry

http://wps.ablongman.com/long_mcwhorter_gcr_8/83/21265/5443948.cw/index.html

Chapter Quiz
Flying the Friendly Skies?

1. Interestingly, evidence shows that consumers are cognizant of the safety performance of airlines, and that they punish airlines that perform in an unsafe manner. Researchers have found that when an airline is at fault in a fatal plane crash, consumers appear to downgrade their safety rating of the airline (I.e., revise upward their estimates of the likelihood of future fatal crashes.) As a result, the offending airline suffers substantial, adverse financial consequences, over and above the costs of losing the plane and being sued on behalf of the victims. Although these research findings do not guarantee that airlines provide the efficient level of safety, they do reveal that the market punishes unsafe performance—suggesting a striking degree of safety awareness on the part of supposedly ignorant consumers. If consumers (who are, after all, the ultimate judges of the value of their own safety) can accurately and cheaply judge the outcomes of the safety procedures followed by airlines, ignorance about the nature of those procedures may be irrelevant to the provision of the efficient level of safety.

2.We began this chapter by repeating the commonplace observation that airlines are safer than cars. Yet many people still worry for their safety every time they get on an airplane. Are they being irrational? Well, the answer, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder. Measured in terms of fatalities per mile traveled, airplanes are indeed some 15 times safer than cars (and 176 times safer than walking). But this number masks the fact that 68 percent of aircraft accidents happen on takeoff and landing, and these operations occupy only 6 percent of flight time. When the safety figures are recalculated on the basis of fatalities per trip, cars are actually 12 times safer than airplanes! And even if we look at perhaps the most neutral measure of safety—fatalities per person-hour traveled—it turns out that cars and planes are about equally safe. So, pick whatever measure of safety seems appropriate to you, but whatever mode of travel you use, we suggest: Buckle up.


Miller, R.L., Benjamin, D.K., & North, D.C. (2001). The Economics of Public Issues, New York: Addison Wesley Longman, pp. 19-20.This activity contains 10 questions.


Match the following terms with their definitions or examples.
Using the pull-down menus, match each item in the left column to the corresponding item in the right column.
not safe
mindful; knowledgeable of something especially through personal experience
one that consumes; one that utilizes economic goods


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