travelers at $20 per hour. By these back-of-the-envelope calculations, the opportunity cost of delays in airports

could be as much as 800 million × 0.5 hours × $20/hour, or $8 billion per year. Clearly, the opportunity costs of

waiting time can be just as important as costs that involve direct spending.

In some cases, realizing the opportunity cost can alter behavior. Imagine, for example, that you spend $8 on

lunch every day at work. You may know perfectly well that bringing a lunch from home would cost only $3 a

day, so the opportunity cost of buying lunch at the restaurant is $5 each day (that is, the $8 buying lunch costs
minus the $3 your lunch from home would cost). Five dollars each day does not seem to be that much.

However, if you project what that adds up to in a year—250 days a year × $5 per day equals $1,250, the cost,

perhaps, of a decent vacation. If you describe the opportunity cost as “a nice vacation” instead of “$5 a day,”

you might make different choices.
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