经济学术语英文版

经济学术语英文版A Absolute Advantage: The ability of a producer to produce a higher absolute quantity of a good with the productive resource available.Abundance: A term that applies when individuals can obtain all the goods they want without cost. If a good is abundant, it is free.Accelerator: The casual relationship between changes in consumption and changes in investment.Activist Fiscal Policy: Use of the federal governments taxing, spending and borrowing powers in order to stimulate economic growth and employment.Actual Turnover: The number of times individuals actually spend their average money holding over a given period of time. Actual turnover is determined by the proportion of income that people receive and actually retain as money balances over a given period of time.Antitrust Laws: Designed to promote open markets by limiting practices that reduce competition.Assets : What a person or business owns.Automatic Stabilizers : Measures built into the governments budget that cause its spending to increase and its tax revenues to decrease when the economy goes into slumps, and that cause government expenditures to decrease and taxes to increase when the economy goes into booms.B Balance of Payments : A record of all the financial transactions between a country and the rest of the world during a given year.Bank Reserves : The total quantity of Federal Reserve notes held in bank vaults or checkable deposits held by the banks at the Fed district banks.Benefits in Kind : Non cash forms of pay or assistance.Bracket Creep : The process by which inflation drives personal incomes upward into higher tax brackets : in a progressive income tax system, this causes an increase in tax burdens.Bretton Woods : An international monetary system operating from 1946-1973. The value of the dollar was fixed in terms of gold, and every other country held its currency at a fixed exchange rate against the dollar; when trade deficits occurred, the central bank of the deficit country financed the deficit with its reserves of international currencies.Business Cycles : Periodic swings in the pace of national economic activity, characterized by alternating expansion and contraction phases.C Capital : The existing stock of productive resources, such as machines and buildings, that have been produced. Capital Intensive : Production methods with a high quantity of capital per worker.Capitalist Economies : Economies which use market-determined prices to guide peoples choices about the production and distribution of goods; these economies generally have productive resource which are privately owned.Central Bank Intervention : Influence on exchange rates in the foreign exchange market when exchange rates are not fixed by law; i.e., a central bank buys its countries currency with foreign currencies to drive its currency up in value; to drive it down, a central bank sells its currencies in return for foreign currencies.Change in Demand: A shift in the entire demand curve so that at any given price, people will want to buy a different amount. A change in demand is caused by some change other than a change in the goods price.Change in Quantity Demanded: Movement up or down a given demand curve caused by a change in the goods price with no shift in the curve itself.Change in Quantity Supplied: A price change causing movement along the supply curve but no shift in the position of the curve itself.Change in Supply: A change in one of the cost determinants of supply causing a shift in the position of the supply curve. Choice: The act of selecting among alternatives, a concept crucial to economics.Civilian Labor Force: All persons over the age of sixteen who are not in the armed forces nor institutionalized and who are either employed or unemployed.Common Property Resources: Resources for which there are no clearly defined property rights; property owned in common by a society. Comparative Advantage: The ability of a producer to produce a good at a lower marginal cost than other producers; marginal cost in the sacrifice of some other good compared to the amount of a good obtained.Competition: Rivalry among individuals in order to acquire more of something that is scarce.Complements: A price change for one product leads to a shift in the opposite direction in the demand for another product.Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA): Federal funding for local governments to retrain and employ difficult-to-hire workers.Consumer Price Index (CPI): A measure of the average amount (price) paid for a market basket of goods and services by a typical U.S. consumer in comparison to the average paid for the same basket in an earlier base year.Consumption Expenditures: The total dollar value of all goods and services purchased by the household sector for current use.Consumption Function: A mathematical expression relating personal consumption expenditures to disposable income.Contraction Phase: The part of the business cycle when GNP, employment and production are on the decline.Corn Laws: Tariffs which England placed on grain imports from 1815 to 1846. By restricting the supply or grain in England, these laws raised the price of grain in England and increased the value of English farmland.Cost: The most valuable opportunity forsaken when a choice is made.Cost-of-Living Adjustments: Automatic adjustments in incomes paid to individual recipients which are tied to the inflation rate, usually measured by the Consumer Price Index.Cost-Push Inflation: A term that applies when increases in the price level are caused by increases in cost.Council of Economic Advisors: Three persons who act as the Presidents chief economic advisers.Craft Unions: Exclusive combinations of workers in individual trades such as printers, shoemakers and bakers.Credi : The capacity to borrow money up to a specified limit under specified conditions.Crowding In: Increase of private investment through the income-raising effect of government spending financed by deficits.Crowding Out : The tendency for federal government, by deficit financing to compete with firms or persons for borrowed funds; that is, firms and households unable to borrow at a low rate of interest curtail their investment and consumption spending.Currency : Paper money issued by the government.Current Account : Acategory in the balance of payments account that includes all transactions that either contribute to national income or involve the spending of national income.Cyclical Unemployment : Temporary layoff of workers due to downturns in the pace of economic activity.D Deficit Spending : A term which refers to the situation wherein he government spends more than it receives in taxes.Demand : The maximum quantities of some good that people will choose (or buy) at different prices. An identical definition is the relative value of the marginal unit of some good when different quantities of that good are available.Demand Curve : A graphic representation of the relationship between prices and the corresponding quantities demanded per time period.Demand Deposits : Checking accounts in commercial banks. These banks are obliged to pay out funds when depositors write checks on those numbers. Checking accounts are not cash - they are numbers recorded in banks.Demand-Pull Inflation : A term used when an increase in aggregate demand occurs which cannot be offset by a corresponding increase in real supply causing an increase in the price level (inflation).Diminishing Relative Value : The principle that if all other factors remain constant, and individuals relative value of a good will decline as more of that good is obtained. Accordingly, the relative value of a good will increase, other factors remaining constant, as an individual gives up more of that good.Diminishing Returns : As more and more of a productive resource is added to a given amount to other productive resources, additions to output will eventually diminish other factors, such as technology and the degree of specialization remaining constant.Discount Rate : The interest a private bank pays for a loan from the U.S. Federal Reserve System.Discretionary Fiscal Policy : Changes in a fiscal (tax or spending) program initiated by the government in order to change aggregate demand.Disequalibrium : The quantity demanded does not equal the quantity supplied at the going price.Disinflation : A slowdown in the rate of inflation.Disposable Income : The amount of an individuals income that remains after the deduction of income taxes.Dividends : Profits of a firm that are distributed to its investors (stockholders).Division of Labor : Assigning of specific tasks to workers and productive resources; it is a reflection of economic specialization.E Economic Growth : A sustained increase in total output or output per person for an economy over a long period of time.Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (ERTA) : Designed to foster savings and investment to encourage long-term growth through reductions of personal income tax rates, taxes on personal savings for retirement and business taxes for firms investing in new capital.Economic Regulations : The control of entry into the market, pricing, the extension of service by established firms and issues of quality control.Economic Specialization : Concentration of activity in a few particular tasks or in producing only a few items.Economics : The study of choice and decision-making in a world with limited resources.Efficiency : The allocation of goods to their uses of highest relative value.Elasticity of Demand : The percentage change in the quantity demanded divided by the percentage change in price.Embargo : A deliberate cutoff of supply, typically intended as a political statement.Employment Act of 1946 : Set full employment and price stability as national policy goals and established the Council of Economic Advisors.Entitlements : Government transfer payments made to individuals having certain designated characteristics and circumstances, such as age or need.Equation of Exchange (M x T = P x Q) : The equation indicates that the money supply multiplied by the number of times that money turns over equals the price level multiplied by real output.Equilibrium : The amount of output supplied equals the amount demanded. At equilibrium, the market has neither a tendency to rise nor fall but clears at the existing price.Exchange : The voluntary transfer of rights to use goods.Exchange Rate : The price of one currency in terms of another.Exchange Value : The purchasing power of a unit of currency for goods and services in the marketplace.Exclusion Principle : The owner of a private good may exclude others from use unless they pay.Expansion Phase : The phase of the business cycle when the economy is growing rapidly : output is increasing, employment is rising, industrial production is increasing and prices are tending to rise.Externalities : Costs or benefits that fall on third parties.FFederal Debt : The current dollar sum of obligations equal to the accumulated past deficits minus surpluses of the United States government.Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) : A federal regulatory agency that insures all deposit accounts in member banks up to $100,000.Federal Reserve System : The U.S. central bank consisting of 12 regional banks are run by a board of governors appointed by the president for overlapping 14-year terms; formally independent of the executive and congressional branches of government; private bank members of the system own their assets.Fiscal Policy : Those federal-government expenditure, tax and borrowing decisions that affect the level of national economic activity.Fisher Effect : An increase in expected inflation causes a proportional increase in the market interest rate so that the expected real rate of interest remains unchanged.Fixed Exchange Rates : The central bank holds the value of the currency constant against some foreign currency or currencies.Fixed Inputs : Inputs that cannot be changed over a given time interval.Floating Exchange Rates : The central bank allows market supply and demand to determine currency exchange rates. Foreign Currency Reserve : The foreign currencies that a central bank keeps on hand for intervention.Free Good : A good which is abundant and costless.Free Rider : One who receives something without paying.Frictional Unemployment : Unemployment due to workers leaving old jobs and seeking new ones.Friedmans Law : Inflation follows excessive monetary growth with a long (about two years) and variable lag : or the rate of price change follows the rate of monetary growth.G Gains of Exchange : The difference between the relative values of a good to the buyer and the seller. How this difference is divided between buyer and seller will depend upon the price of the good. Exchange will not occur unless both the buyer and the seller expect to receive some of this gain.GNP Deflator : Measure of the percentage increase in the average price of products in GNP over a certain base year (now 1972) published by the Commerce Department.Good : Anything that anyone wants. All options or alternatives are goods. Goods can be tangible or intangible.Government Budget Constraint : Total government outlays (the sum of expenditures on goods and services, transfer payments and interest on debt) must equal total revenue (the sum of taxes and U.S. government loans).Government Security : A contract of the government promising to pay a lender a fixed rate of interest per year and repay the original loan at a fixed future date. Government Transfer Payment : Outlays by the government for which no good or service is received in the current period.Gross National Product (GNP) : The total market value, in terms of current dollars, of all final goods and services produced in the U.S. in one year.H Hyperinflations : Rapid, out-of-control inflations, at double digit rates per month and more, usually occurring only during wars and periods of severe political instability.I Income Policies : Strategies to restrict wage and price increases, ranging from jawboning by the president to laws that set wage and price levels.Income Statement : An annual summary of income and expenses of a given business in order to determine the net income of the business.Income Velocity of Money : The ratio of national income to the quantity of money in circulation; velocity measures the average number of times money changes hands in generating national income per year (monetarist theory).Inelastic Demand : A term used when the percentage change in quantity demanded is smaller than the percentage change in price.Indexation : Modifying contracts so that their dollar terms adjust to the inflation rate as measured in an index, such as the consumer price index.Inflation : Increase in the overall level of prices over an extended period of time.Interest : The annual earnings that are sacrificed when wealth is invested in a given asset or business. The interest sacrificed by investing in a given business is often called the cost of capital.International Monetary Fund (IMF) : The overseer for the exchange rate system and international monetary relations.Inventory : A stock of goods or resources held by a buyer or seller in order to reduce the cost of exchange or production.Investment Expenditures : Dollar expenditures by firms on capital goods (factories, office buildings and others structures, machinery and equipment, inventories and residential housing) used to produce other new goods and services.Involuntary Unemployment : Potential workers able and willing to work at the existing market wage rate, are unable to find jobs.J K Keynesians : A group of economists who emphasize an activist governmental role in economic affairs through planned changes in the federal governments expenditures and taxes.L Labor Intensive Methods : Use of low quantity of capital per worker.Labor Productivity : The ratio of real output per unit of labor input; growth is measured by a higher ratio of outputs to inputs.Large Econometric Models : Mathematical constructions of national economics used for policy analysis and forecasting.Law of Demand : People purchase more of any particular good or service as its relative price falls; they purchase less as its relative price rises.Law of Supply : At higher relative prices, the quantity supplied of a good will increase; at lower relative prices, smaller quantities will be supplied.Legal Tender : Paper dollars and coins mandated as acceptable means of payment by the government.Leisure : All uses of time in which ones labor services are not exchanged for money. The uses of everyones time can be divided between employment and leisure.Liabilities : The debts of a person or business.Libertarianism : The view that governments role should be minimal, rarely interfering in the personal lives of private citizens.Lorenz Curve : A graph which visually presents a measure of the inequality of a nations income distribution.M M1 : The total quantity of coins and paper currency classified as legal tender by government mandate that circulates in the hands of the public, plus all checking account balances the public maintains in financial institutions.M2 : All of M1 plus savings, small time deposit account balances (less than $100,000) in financial institutions and small money market mutual funds owned by individuals.Macroeconomics : The study of the sum total of economic activity, dealing with the issues of growth, inflation0 and unemployment and with national economic policies relating to these issues. Malthusian Trap : The minimum subsistence level to which humans descend as a result of geometric population growth and arithmetic r