economics

• Scarcity- economic problem where limited production of goods occur due to a lack of resources while demand is high
• Gross Domestic Product (GDP) - total value of all final goods and services produced within a country's borders during one year
• Ecoonomics - the study of how people deal with satisfying an unlimited and competing needs and wants using resources
• Need - bacis requirement for human survival, which includes food, shelter, and clothing
• Want - something a person wants to have, but is not required for survival.
• Good - a tangible, useful item that is used to satisfy wants and needs
• Durable good - a good that lasts three years or more with regular use with minimal weardown
• Nondurable good - a good that lasts fewer than three years with regular use and gets worn out
• Consumer good - A good intended for use by individual consumers rather than a business
• Capital good - equipment or tools use by manufacturers to produce other goods
• Service - work or labor performed for someone
• Value - monetary worth of a good or service determined by the market
• Paradox of value - Apparent contradiction between the high values of nonnecessities and the low value of essential items.
• Utility - Ability or capacity of a good or service to be useful and able to give satisfaction to someone.
• Wealth - sum of tangible economic goods that are scarce, useful, and transferable from one person to another; excludes services
• Factors of production - Productive resources needed to produce goods; the four factors are: Land, Labour, Capital and Entrepreneurship
• Land - natural resources, "gifts of nature" not made by human effort; one of the four factors of production
• Capital - Tools, equipment, and factories used in the production of goods and services; one of the four factors of production
• Labor - People with all their abilities and efforts; one of the four factors of production
• Entrepreneurs - Risk-taking individuals who introduce new products or services in search of new profits; one of the four factors of production
• Productive possibilities curve - diagram representing all possible combinations of goods and/or services an economy can produce when all productive resources are fully meployes
• Opportunity cost - cost of the next best alternative use of money, time, or resources when one choice is made rather tha nanother.
• Trade-offs - alternative that must be given up when one choice is made rather than another
• Consumerism - a social movement that was aimed at promoting the interests of consumers
• Economic growth - increase in a nation's total output of goods and services over time
• Productivity - measure of the amount of output produced in a specific time period with a given amount of resources; normally expressed as output per worker
• Human capital - sum of people's skills, abilities, health, and motivation
• Division of labor - Division of work into a number of separate tasks to be performed by different workers
• Specialization - Assignment of tasks to the workers, factories, regions, or nations that can perform them most efficiently
• Economic interdependence - Mutual dependence of the economic activities of one person, company, region, or nation
• Market - meeting place or mechanism through which buyers and sellers of a product come together; local, regional, national, or global
• mechanism - process or means by which something can be accomplished
• factor markets - markets in which productive resources are bought and sold
• product markets - market in which goods and services are bought and sold
• economic model - simplified version of a complex concept or behavior expressed in the form of a graph, figure, equation, or diagram
• assumptions - something taken for granted; something we think is true
• cost-benefit analysis - comparison of the cost of an action to its benefits
• free enterprise economy - market economy in which privately owned businesses have the freedom to operate for a profit with limited government intervention
• standard of living - quality of life based on ownership of necessities and luxuries that make life easier
• Financial institution


  Group that pools savings to invest; includes banks, insurance companies, savings & loan associations, credit unions