- Branche: Economy; Printing & publishing
- Number of terms: 15233
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An approach to business based on looking after yourself by looking out for your own. At least until the crisis of the late 1990s, some Asian companies, and even governments, were notable for awarding contracts only to family and friends. This was often a form of corruption, resulting in economic inefficiency.
Industry:Economy
When banks suddenly stop lending, or bond market liquidity evaporates, usually because creditors have become extremely risk averse.
Industry:Economy
You can't tell them apart. Something is fungible when any one single specimen is indistinguishable from any other. Somebody who is owed $1 does not care which particular dollar he gets. Anything that people want to use as money must be fungible, whether it be gold bars, beads or shells.
Industry:Economy
Jobs for all that want them. This does not mean zero unemployment because at any point in time some people do not want to work. Also, because some people are always between jobs, there will usually be some frictional unemployment. Full employment means that everyone who wants work and is willing to work at the market wage is in work. Most governments aim to achieve full employment, although nowadays they rarely try to lower unemployment below the nairu: the lowest jobless rate consistent with stable, low inflation.
Industry:Economy
An influential economist of the Austrian school, who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1974 for his theory of the business cycle many years after this body of work seemed to have been disproved by Keynes. Born in 1899, Hayek attended his home-town University of Vienna after the First World War. He was attracted to socialism until he read a pioneering Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, on the subject, after which, he said, “the world was never the same again”. Hayek argued that the business cycle originated from expanded credit creation by banks, which was followed by firms and people making mistaken capital investments in producing things for which the market turns out to be smaller (or larger) than expected. But after an initially enthusiastic reception, the Austrian business-cycle theory lost out in policy debates to Keynes's General Theory. After the Second World War, Hayek was a leading member of the Chicago school along with Milton Friedman, among others. Hayek was a noted proponent of the free-market system and a critic of state planning. His 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom, anticipated the demise of command economies that sought to suppress price signals. This prediction came from his belief in the limits of human reason and has faith in the superior ability of capitalism to make efficient use of limited information and to learn by trial and error. His views, which echo Adam Smith’s invisible hand, are said to have inspired the free-market economic reforms undertaken in the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. He died in 1992.
Industry:Economy
That part of the jobless total caused by people simply changing jobs and taking their time about it, because they are spending time on job search or are taking a break before starting with a new employer. There is likely to be some frictional unemployment even when there is technically full employment, because most people change jobs from time to time.
Industry:Economy
The ability of people to undertake economic transactions with people in other countries free from any restraints imposed by governments or other regulators. Measured by the volume of imports and exports, world trade has become increasingly free in the years since the second world war. A fall in barriers to trade, as a result of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and its successor, the World Trade Organization, has helped stimulate this growth. The volume of world merchandise trade at the start of the 21st century was about 17 times what it was in 1950, and the world's total output was not even six times as big. The ratio of world exports to GDP had more than doubled since 1950. Of this, trade in manufactured goods was worth three times the value of trade in services, although the share of services trade was growing fast. For economists, the benefits of free trade are explained by the theory of comparative advantage, with each country doing those things in which it is comparatively more efficient. As long as each country specializes in products in which it has a comparative advantage, trade will be mutually beneficial. Some critics of free trade argue that trade with developing countries, where wages are usually lower and working hours longer than in developed countries, is unfair and will wipe out jobs in high-wage countries. They want autarky or fair trade. Real-world trade patterns sometimes seem to challenge the theory of comparative advantage (see new trade theory). Most trade occurs between countries that do not have huge cost differences. The biggest trading partner of the United States, for instance, is Canada. Well over half the exports from France, Germany and Italy go to other European Union countries. Moreover, these countries sell similar things to each other: cars made in France are exported to Germany, and German cars go to France. The main reason seems to be cross-border differences in consumer tastes. But the agricultural exports of Australia, say, or Saudi Arabia's reliance on oil, do clearly stem from their particular stock of natural resources. Also poorer countries often have more unskilled labor, so they export simple manufactures such as clothing.
Industry:Economy
Getting the benefit of a good or service without paying for it, not necessarily illegally. This may be possible because certain types of goods and services are actually hard to charge for--a firework display, for instance. Another way to look at this may be that the good or service has a positive externality. However, there can sometimes be a free-rider problem, if the number of people willing to pay for the good or service is not enough to cover the cost of providing it. In this case, the good or service might not be produced, even though it would be beneficial for the economy as a whole to have it. Public goods are often at risk of free riding; in their case, the problem can be overcome by financing the good by imposing a tax on the entire population.
Industry:Economy
Investing directly in production in another country, either by buying a company there or establishing new operations of an existing business. This is done mostly by companies as opposed to financial institutions, which prefer indirect investment abroad such as buying small parcels of a country's supply of shares or bonds. Foreign direct investment (FDI) grew rapidly during the 1990s before slowing a bit, along with the global economy, in the early years of the 21st century. Most of this investment went from one OECD country to another, but the share going to developing countries, especially in Asia, increased steadily. There was a time when economists considered FDI as a substitute for trade. Building factories in foreign countries was one way of jumping tariff barriers. Now economists typically regard FDI and trade as complementary. For example, a firm can use a factory in one country to supply neighboring markets. Some investments, especially in services industries, are essential prerequisites for selling to foreigners. Who would buy a Big Mac in London if it had to be sent from New York?
Governments used to be highly suspicious of FDI, often regarding it as corporate imperialism. Nowadays they are more likely to court it. They hope that investors will create jobs, and bring expertise and technology that will be passed on to local firms and workers, helping to sharpen up their whole economy. Furthermore, unlike financial investors, multinationals generally invest directly in plant and equipment. Since it is hard to uproot a chemicals factory, these investments, once made, are far more enduring than the flows of hot money that whisk in and out of emerging markets (see developing countries). Mergers and acquisitions are a significant form of FDI. For instance, in 1997, more than 90% of FDI into the United States took the form of mergers rather than of setting up new subsidiaries and opening factories.
Industry:Economy
