Macro-Economics Terms

Book Recommendations (by Professor)

  1. Adam Smith - “Wealth of Nations”

Terms

Oikonomos: Greek work that then became… Economics!

Efficiency: Society is getting the maximum benefits from it’s scarce resources (Size of Pie)

Equality: Benefits are distributed uniformly among society’s members (Division of Pie slices)

Margin: Edge (knife edge? idr lol)

Economics: “How society manages its scarce resources” - (Alfred Marital): “A study of mankind in the ordinary business of life.”

Scarcity: Society has limited resources and therefor cannot produce all the goods and services people wish to have

Opportunity Cost: What you give up to get something

Rational People: Systematically and purposefully do the best they can to achieve their objectives, given the available opportunities

Marginal Change: Used to describe a small incremental adjustment to an existing plan of action

Incentive: Something that induces a person to act

Market Economy: Decisions of a central planner are replaced by the decisions of millions of firms and households

Property Rights: Individuals can own and control scarce resources

Market Failure: Market on its own fails to produce an efficient allocation of resources

Externality: Impact of one person’s actions on the well-being of a bystander

Market Power: Ability of a single person or firm to unduly influence market prices

Productivity: The amount of Goods and Services produced by each unit of labor input

Inflation: An increase in the overall level of prices in the Economy

Business Cycle: The irregular and largely unpreditable fluctuations in economic activity, as measured by the production of Goods and Services or the numbers of people employed.