- Industry: Economy; Printing & publishing
- Number of terms: 15233
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In the last years of the 20th century, some economists argued that developments in information technology and globalization had given birth to a new economy (first, in the United States), which had a higher rate of productivity and growth than the old economy it replaced. Some went further, adding that in the new economy inflation was dead, the business cycle abolished and the traditional rules of economics were redundant. These claims were highly controversial. Other economists pointed out that similar predictions had been made during earlier periods of rapid technological change, yet the nature of economics was not fundamentally altered. With the bursting of the dotcom stock market bubble in 2000, the phrase fell into disuse, although productivity continued to soar, thanks not least to new technology, especially in the United States.
Industry:Economy
When the value of a good to a consumer changes because the number of people using it changes. For instance, owning a phone becomes more valuable as more people are plugged into the telephone network. Network effects are sometimes called network externality, although this implies, often wrongly, that the benefits from being part of a network are a sort of market failure. They give a huge competitive advantage to the firm that owns the network. This incumbent advantage arises because a new entrant must persuade people to join a network that starts with fewer members, and thus may be less valuable to them than the network they are currently in. This is why markets for products with network effects are often dominated by only a few firms or a single monopoly. Some economists argue that many recent technological innovations, notably the Internet, have large positive network effects, which make possible much higher productivity and growth than in the past.
Industry:Economy
A measure used to help decide whether or not to proceed with an investment. Net means that both the costs and benefits of the investment are included. To calculate net present value (NPV), first add together all the expected benefits from the investment, now and in the future. Then add together all the expected costs. Then work out what these future benefits and costs are worth now by adjusting future cashflow using an appropriate discount rate. Then subtract the costs from the benefits. If the NPV is negative, then the investment cannot be justified by the expected returns. If the NPV is positive, it can, although it pays to make comparisons with the NPVs of alternative investment opportunities before going ahead.
Industry:Economy
The school of economics that developed the free-market ideas of classical economics into a full-scale model of how an economy works. The best-known neo-classical economist was Alfred Marshall, the father of marginal analysis. Neo-classical thinking, which mostly assumes that markets tend towards equilibrium, was attacked by Keynes and became unfashionable during the Keynesian-dominated decades after the Second World War. But, thanks to economists such as Milton Friedman, many neo-classical ideas have since become widely accepted and uncontroversial.
Industry:Economy
A way of building redistribution into the taxation system by taking money from people with high incomes and paying it to people with low incomes. Because it takes place automatically through the tax system, it may attach less stigma to the receipt of financial help than some other forms of welfare assistance. However, it may also discourage recipients from working to increase their income (see poverty trap), which is why some countries have introduced a form of negative income tax that is available only to the working poor. In the United States, this is known as the earned income tax credit.
Industry:Economy
One of two main sorts of market failure often associated with the provision of insurance. The other is adverse selection. Moral hazard means that people with insurance may take greater risks than they would do without it because they know they are protected, so the insurer may get more claims than it bargained for. (See also deposit insurance, lender of last resort, IMF and World Bank. )
Industry:Economy
When the production of a good or service with no close substitutes is carried out by a single firm with the market power to decide the price of its output. Contrast with perfect competition, in which no single firm can affect the price of what it produces. Typically, a monopoly will produce less, at a higher price, than would be the case for the entire market under perfect competition. It decides its price by calculating the quantity of output at which its marginal revenue would equal its marginal cost, and then sets whatever price would enable it to sell exactly that quantity. In practice, few monopolies are absolute, and their power to set prices or limit supply is constrained by some actual or potential near-competitors (see monopolistic competition). An extreme case of this occurs when a single firm dominates a market but has no pricing power because it is in a contestable market; that is if it does not operate efficiently, a more efficient rival firm will take its entire market away. Antitrust policy can curb monopoly power by encouraging competition or, when there is a natural monopoly and thus competition would be inefficient, through regulation of prices. Furthermore, the mere possibility of ¬antitrust action may encourage a monopoly to self-regulate its behavior, simply to avoid the trouble an investigation would bring.
Industry:Economy
Makes the world go round and comes in many forms, from shells and beads to gold coins to plastic or paper. It is better than barter in enabling an economy’s scarce resources to be allocated efficiently. Money has three main qualities:
* as a medium of exchange, buyers can give it to sellers to pay for goods and services;
* as a unit of account, it can be used to add up apples and oranges in some common value;
* as a store of value, it can be used to transfer purchasing power into the future. A farmer who exchanges fruit for money can spend that money in the future; if he holds on to his fruit it might rot and no longer be useful for paying for something. Inflation undermines the usefulness of money as a store of value, in particular, and also as a unit of account for comparing values at different points in time. Hyper-inflation may destroy confidence in a particular form of money even as a medium of exchange. Measures of liquidity describe how easily an asset can be exchanged for money (the easier this is, the more liquid is the asset).
Industry:Economy
What a central bank does to control the money supply, and thereby manage demand. Monetary policy involves open-market operations, reserve requirements and changing the short-term rate of interest (the discount rate). It is one of the two main tools of macroeconomic policy, the side-kick of fiscal policy, and is easier said than done well. (See monetarism. )
Industry:Economy
A minimum rate of pay that firms are legally obliged to pay their workers. Most industrial countries have a minimum wage, although certain sorts of workers are often exempted, such as young people or part-timers. Most economists reckon that a minimum wage, if it is doing what it is meant to do, will lead to higher unemployment than there would be without it. The main justification offered by politicians for having a minimum wage is that the wage that would be decided by buyers and sellers in a free market would be so low that it would be immoral for people to work for it. So the minimum wage should be above the market-clearing wage, in which case fewer workers would be demanded at that wage than would be hired at the market wage. How many fewer will depend on how far the minimum wage is above the market wage?
Some economists have challenged this simple supply and demand model. Several empirical studies have suggested that a minimum wage moderately above the free-market wage would not harm employment much and could (in rare circumstances) potentially raise it. These studies are not widely accepted among economists. Whatever it does for those in work, a minimum wage cannot help the majority of the very poorest people in most countries, who typically have no job in which to earn a minimum wage.
Industry:Economy
