Economics Individual choice Economy Market economy Invisible hand Resource Scarce Opportunity cost Microeconomics Macroeconomics Economic aggregates Self-regulating Keynesian economics Monetary policy Fiscal policy Model Other things equal assumption Positive economics Normative economics Trade-off Production possibility frontier Efficient Factors of production Technology Trade Gains from trade Specialization Comparative advantage Absolute advantage | anything, such as land, labor, and capital, that can be used to produce something else; includes natural resources (from the physical environment) and human resources (labor, skill, intelligence). a phrase used by Adam Smith to refer to the way in which an individual’s pursuit of self-interest can lead, without the individual’s intending it, to good results for society as a whole. a school of thought emerging out of the works of John Maynard Keynes; according to Keynesian economics, a depressed economy is the result of inadequate spending and government intervention can help a depressed economy through monetary policy and fiscal policy. an economy in which decisions of individual producers and consumers largely determine what, how, and for whom to produce, with little government involvement in the decisions. a system for coordinating a society’s productive and consumptive activities. the giving up of something in order to have something else. the advantage conferred if the opportunity cost of producing the good or service is lower for another producer. in the development of a model, the assumption that all relevant factors except the one under study remain unchanged. in short supply; a resource is scarce when there is not enough of the resource available to satisfy all the various ways a society wants to use it. the practice, in a market economy, in which individuals provide goods and services to others and receive goods and services in return. the technical means for the production of goods and services. a situation in which different people each engage in the different task that he or she is good at performing. describes an economy in which problems such as unemployment are resolved without government intervention, through the working of the invisible hand, and in which government attempts to improve the economy’s performance would be ineffective at best, and would probably make things worse. the branch of economic analysis that makes prescriptions about the way the economy should work. a simplified representation of a real situation that is used to better understand real-life situations. the resources used to produce goods and services. The main factors of production are land, labor, physical capital, and human capital. the real cost of an item: what you must give up in order to get it. the branch of economics that studies how people make decisions and how those decisions interact. the study of scarcity and choice. the branch of economics that is concerned with the overall ups and downs in the economy. the advantage conferred by the ability to produce more of a good or service with a given amount of time and resources; not the same as comparative advantage. is the use of changes in taxes and government spending to affect overall spending. is the government's use of changes in the quantity of money to alter interest rates, which in turn affects the overall level of spending. describes a market or economy that takes all opportunities to make some people better off without making other people worse off. the branch of economic analysis that describes the way the economy actually works. the decision by an individual of what to do, which necessarily involves a decision of what not to do. an economic principle that states that by dividing tasks and trading, people can get more of what they want through trade than they could if they tried to be self-sufficient. a model that illustrates the trade-offs facing an economy that produces only two goods; shows the maximum quantity of one good that can be produced for each possible quantity of the other good produced. economic measures that summarize data across different markets for goods, services, workers, and assets. |
Economics
Individual choice
Economy
Market economy
Invisible hand
Resource
Scarce
Opportunity cost
Microeconomics
Macroeconomics
Economic aggregates
Self-regulating
Keynesian economics
Monetary policy
Fiscal policy
Model
Other things equal assumption
Positive economics
Normative economics
Trade-off
Production possibility frontier
Efficient
Factors of production
Technology
Trade
Gains from trade
Specialization
Comparative advantage
Absolute advantage