- Industry: Economy; Printing & publishing
- Number of terms: 15233
- Number of blossaries: 1
- Company Profile:
A middleman. An individual or institution that brings together investors (the source of funds) and users of funds (such as borrowers). May be increasingly at risk of disintermediation.
Industry:Economy
Certificate of ownership of a financial asset, such as a bond or a share.
Industry:Economy
A place in which an above-average amount of financial business takes place. The big ones are New York, London, Tokyo and Frankfurt. Small ones such as Dublin, Bermuda, Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands also play an important part in the global financial system. Globalization and the increase in electronic trading has raised concerns about whether there will be as much need for financial centers in the 21st century as there was in the 19th and 20th centuries. So far, the evidence suggests that the biggest, at least, will remain important.
Industry:Economy
America's central bank. Set up in 1913, and popularly known as the Fed, the system divides the United States into 12 Federal Reserve districts, each with its own regional Federal Reserve bank. These are overseen by the Federal Reserve Board, consisting of seven governors based in Washington, DC. Monetary policy is decided by its Federal Open Market Committee.
Industry:Economy
Many politicians and NGOs argue that free trade is not enough; it should also be fair. On the face of it, fairness is self-evidently a good thing. However, fairness, in trade as in beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder. Frederic Bastiat, a 19th-century French satirist, once observed that the sun offered unfair competition to candle makers. If windows could be boarded up during the day, he argued, more jobs could be created making candles. American trade unions complain that Mexicans' lower wages, say, give them an unfair advantage. Mexicans say they cannot compete fairly against more productive American counterparts. Both sides are wrong. Mexicans are paid less than Americans largely because they are, in general, less productive. There is nothing unfair about that; indeed, it helps to make trade mutually beneficial. The mutual benefits of trade also disprove the fair traders' other complaint, that free trade harms poor countries. (See comparative advantage. )
Industry:Economy
The prices charged by producers to wholesalers and retailers. Because these prices are eventually passed on to the end customer, changes in factory prices, also known as producer prices, can be a leading indicator of consumer price inflation.
Industry:Economy
The ingredients of economic activity: land, labor, capital and enterprise.
Industry:Economy
A measure of output reflecting the costs of the factors of production used, rather than market prices, which may differ because of indirect tax and subsidy (see GDP).
Industry:Economy
An economic side-effect. Externalities are costs or benefits arising from an economic activity that affect somebody other than the people engaged in the economic activity and are not reflected fully in prices. For instance, smoke pumped out by a factory may impose clean-up costs on nearby residents; bees kept to produce honey may pollinate plants belonging to a nearby farmer, thus boosting his crop. Because these costs and benefits do not form part of the calculations of the people deciding whether to go ahead with the economic activity they are a form of market failure, since the amount of the activity carried out if left to the free market will be an inefficient use of resources. If the externality is beneficial, the market will provide too little; if it is a cost, the market will supply too much. One potential solution is regulation: a ban, say. Another, when the externality is negative, is a tax on the activity or, if the externality is positive, a subsidy. But the most efficient solution to externalities is to require them to be included in the costings of those engaged in the economic activity, so there is self-regulation. For instance, the externality of pollution can be solved by creating property rights over clean air, entitling their owner to a fee if they are infringed by a factory pumping out smoke. According to the Coase theorem (named after a Nobel prize-winning economist, Ronald Coase), it does not matter who has ownership, so long as property rights are fully allocated and completely free trade of all property rights is possible.
Industry:Economy
Sales abroad. Exports grew steadily as a share of world output during the second half of the 20th century. Yet by some measures this share was no higher than at the end of the 19th century, before free trade fell victim to a political backlash.
Industry:Economy
