- Industry: Economy; Printing & publishing
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Since 1930 it has been the norm in most developed countries for average prices to rise year after year. However, before 1930 deflation (falling prices) was as likely as inflation. On the eve of the First World War, for example, prices in the UK, overall, were almost exactly the same as they had been at the time of the great fire of London in 1666. Deflation is a persistent fall in the general price level of goods and services. It is not to be confused with a decline in prices in one economic sector or with a fall in the inflation rate (which is known as disinflation). Sometimes deflation can be harmless, perhaps even a good thing, if lower prices lift real income and hence spending power. In the last 30 years of the 19th century, for example, consumer prices fell by almost half in the United States, as the expansion of railways and advances in industrial technology brought cheaper ways to make everything. Yet annual real GDP growth over the period averaged more than 4%. Deflation is dangerous, however, more so even than inflation, when it reflects a sharp slump in demand, excess capacity and a shrinking money supply, as in the Great depression of the early 1930s. In the four years to 1933, American consumer prices fell by 25% and real GDP by 30%. Runaway deflation of this sort can be much more damaging than runaway inflation, because it creates a vicious spiral that is hard to escape. The expectation that prices will be lower tomorrow may encourage consumers to delay purchases, depressing demand and forcing firms to cut prices by even more. Falling prices also inflate the real burden of debt (that is, increase real interest rates) causing bankruptcy and bank failure. This makes deflation particularly dangerous for economies that have large amounts of corporate debt. Most serious of all, deflation can make monetary policy ineffective: nominal interest rates cannot be negative, so real rates can get stuck too high.
Industry:Economy
In the red – when more money goes out than comes in. A budget deficit occurs when public spending exceeds government revenue. A current account deficit occurs when exports and inflows from private and official transfers are worth less than imports and transfer outflows (see balance of payments).
Industry:Economy
A method of reaching economic decisions by comparing the costs of doing something with its benefits. It sounds simple and common-sensical, but, in practice, it can easily become complicated and is much abused. With careful selection of the assumptions used in cost-benefit analysis it can be made to support, or oppose, almost anything. This is particularly so when the decision being con templated involves some cost or benefit for which there is no market price or which, because of an externality, is not fully reflected in the market price. Typical examples would be a project to build a hydroelectric dam in an area of outstanding natural beauty or a law to require factories to limit emissions of gases that may cause ill-health. (See shadow price. )
Industry:Economy
The “dismal science”, according to Thomas Carlyle, a 19th-century Scottish writer. It has been described in many ways, few of them flattering. The most concise, non-abusive, definition is the study of how society uses its scarce resources.
Industry:Economy
What people are usually thinking of when they worry about inflation. The prices paid by whoever finally consumes goods or services, as opposed to prices paid by firms at various stages of the production process (see, for example, factory prices).
Industry:Economy
How good consumers feel about their economic prospects. Measures of average consumer confidence can be a useful, though not infallible, indicators of how much consumers are likely to spend. Combined with measures such as business confidence, it can shed light on overall levels of economic activity.
Industry:Economy
The tendency of a market to be dominated by a few big firms. A high degree of concentration may be evidence of antitrust problems, if it reflects a lack of competition. Traditionally, economists examined whether there was too much concentration using the Herfindahl-Hirschman index, which is determined by adding the squares of the market shares of all firms involved. A low Herfindahl indicated many competitors and thus great difficulty in exercising market power; a high Herfindahl, however, suggested a concentrated market in which price rises are easier to sustain. More recently, antitrust authorities have placed less emphasis on concentration. One reason is that it is hard to define the market in which concentration should be measured. Instead, antitrust authorities have turned their attention to finding examples of firms earning excessive profits or holding back innovation, although this too raises tricky conceptual and practical questions.
Industry:Economy
The more competition there is, the more likely are firms to be efficient and prices to be low. Economists have identified several different sorts of competition. Perfect competition is the most competitive market imaginable in which everybody is a price taker. Firms earn only normal profits, the bare minimum profit necessary to keep them in business. If firms earn more than this (excess profits) other firms will enter the market and drive the price level down until there are only normal profits to be made. Most markets exhibit some form of imperfect or monopolistic competition. There are fewer firms than in a perfectly competitive market and each can to some degree create barriers to entry. Thus firms can earn some excess profits without a new entrant being able to compete to bring prices down. The least competitive market is a monopoly, dominated by a single firm that can earn substantial excess profits by controlling either the amount of output in the market or the price (but not both). In this sense it is a price setter. When there are few firms in a market (oligopoly) they have the opportunity to behave as a monopolist through some form of collusion (see cartel). A market dominated by a single firm does not necessarily have monopoly power if it is a contestable market. In such a market, a single firm can dominate only if it produces as efficiently as possible and does not earn excess profits. If it becomes inefficient or earns excess profits, another more efficient or less profitable firm will enter the market and dominate it instead.
Industry:Economy
The enemy of capitalism and now nearly extinct. Invented by Karl Marx, who predicted that feudalism and capitalism would be succeeded by the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, during which the state would “wither away” and economic life would be organized to achieve “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”. The Soviet Union was the most prominent attempt to put communism into practice and the result was conspicuous failure, although some modern followers of Marx reckon that the Soviets missed the point.
Industry:Economy
An economy that does not take part in inter¬national trade; the opposite of an open economy. At the turn of the century about the only notable example left of a closed economy is North Korea (see autarky).
Industry:Economy
