- Industry: Economy; Printing & publishing
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A measure of the responsiveness of one variable to changes in another. Economists have identified four main types. * price elasticity measures how much the quantity of supply of a good, or demand for it, changes if its price changes. If the percentage change in quantity is more than the percentage change in price, the good is price elastic; if it is less, the good is inelastic. * income elasticity of demand measures how the quantity demanded changes when income increases. * Cross-elasticity shows how the demand for one good (say, coffee) changes when the price of another good (say, tea) changes. If they are substitute goods (tea and coffee) the cross-elasticity will be positive: an increase in the price of tea will increase demand for coffee. If they are complementary goods (tea and teapots) the cross-elasticity will be negative. If they are unrelated (tea and oil) the cross-elasticity will be zero. * Elasticity of substitution describes how easily one input in the production process, such as labor, can be substituted for another, such as machinery.
Industry:Economy
Getting the most out of the resources used. For a particular sort of efficiency often favored by economists, see Pareto efficient.
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
A way of punishing errant countries, which is currently more acceptable than bombing or invading them. One or more restrictions are imposed on international trade with the targeted country in order to persuade the target’s government to change a policy. Possible sanctions include limiting export or import trade with the target; constraining investment in the target; and preventing transfers of money involving citizens or the government of the target. Sanctions can be multi¬lateral, with many countries acting together, perhaps under the auspices of the United Nations, or unilateral, when one country takes action on its own. How effective sanctions are is debatable. According to one study, between 1914 and 1990 there were 116 occasions on which various countries imposed economic sanctions. Two-thirds of these failed to achieve their stated goals. The cost to the country imposing sanctions can be large, particularly when it is acting unilaterally. It is estimated that in 1995 imposing sanctions on other countries cost the American economy over $15 billion in lost exports and 200,000 in lost jobs in export industries. Widely considered a notable success was the use of economic sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa, although some economists question how big a part the sanctions actually played. Clearly important was the fact that the sanctions were imposed multilaterally by the international community, so there were comparatively few breaches of the restrictions. But, arguably, the most crucial factor in persuading the government in Pretoria to cave in was that foreign companies fearing that their share price would fall because their investments in South Africa would attract bad publicity voluntarily chose for commercial reasons to disinvest.
Industry:Economy
A statistic used for judging the health of an economy, such as GDP per head, the rate of unemployment or the rate of inflation. Such statistics are often subject to huge revisions in the months and years after they are first published, thus causing difficulties and embarrassment for the economic policymakers who rely on them.
Industry:Economy
In January 1999, 11 of the 15 countries in the European union merged their national currencies into a single European currency, the Euro. This decision was motivated partly by politics and partly by hoped-for economic benefits from the creation of a single, integrated European economy. These benefits included currency stability and low inflation, underwritten by an independent European central bank (a particular boon for countries with poor inflation records, such as Italy and Spain, but less so for traditionally low-inflation Germany). Furthermore, European businesses and individuals stood to save from handling one currency rather than many. Comparing prices and wages across the Euro zone became easier, increasing competition by making it easier for companies to sell throughout the Euro-zone and for consumers to shop around. Forming the single currency also involved big risks, however. Euro members gave up both the right to set their own interest rates and the option of moving exchange rates against each other. They also agreed to limit their budget deficits under a stability and growth pact. Some economists argued that this loss of flexibility could prove costly if their economies did not behave as one and could not easily adjust in other ways. How well the Euro-zone functions will depend on how closely it resembles what economists call an optimal currency area. When the Euro economies are not growing in unison, a common monetary policy risks being too loose for some and too tight for others. If so, there may need to be large transfers of funds from regions doing well to those doing badly. But if the effects of shocks persist, fiscal transfers would merely delay the day of reckoning; ultimately, wages or people (or both) would have to shift. In its first few years, the Euro fell sharply against the dollar, though it recovered during late 2002. Sluggish growth in some European economies led to intense pressure for interest rate cuts, and to the stability and growth pact being breached, though not scrapped. Even so, by 2003 12 countries had adopted the Euro, with the expectation of more to follow after the enlargement of the EU to 25 members in 2004.
Industry:Economy
Mathematics and sophisticated computing applied to economics. Econometricians crunch data in search of economic relationships that have statistical significance. Sometimes this is done to test a theory; at other times the computers churn the numbers until they come up with an interesting result. Some economists are fierce critics of theory-free econometrics.
Industry:Economy
A firm with the ability to set prices in its market (see monopoly, oligopoly and antitrust).
Industry:Economy
When a country’s own money is replaced as its citizens’ preferred currency by the US dollar. This can be a deliberate government policy or the result of many private choices by buyers and sellers (for instance, at the first sign of trouble, investors across Latin America generally flee into dollars). When it is government policy, dollarization is, in essence, a beefed up currency board. The appeal of dollarization is that the value of the dollar is more stable than the distrusted local currency, which may well have a history of suddenly falling in value. By eliminating all possible risk of devaluation against the dollar, the cost of local companies’ and the government’s borrowing in international markets is reduced, as the currency risk is removed. A big downside is that the country hands over control of monetary policy to the Federal Reserve, and the right interest rate for the United States may not be appropriate for the dollarized country, if that country and the United States do not constitute an optimal currency area. This is one reason that in some countries the local currency has been displaced by another fairly stable currency, such as, in some central European economies, the Euro (and before that the d-mark).
Industry:Economy
People are better off specializing than trying to be jacks of all trades and ending up masters of none. The logic of dividing the workforce into different crafts and professions is the same as that underpinning the case for free trade: everybody benefits from doing those things in which they have a comparative advantage and using income from doing so to meet their other needs.
Industry:Economy
