PHYSICAL ASSETS
Non-financial assets or physical products, such as commercial and residential properties, that have value and therefore contribute to wealth.
FINANCIAL ASSETS
Non-physical assets, such as bank deposits, shares, bonds and other financial claims that have value.
LIQUID ASSETS
Financial assets that are ‘near money’, such as bank deposits, which can be converted into cash easily and quickly.
TOTAL REVENUE
Also known as turnover, total revenue is the total amount of money received by a firm from the sale of its goods or services in a given period.
AVERAGE REVENUE
The revenue per unit of output sold, found by dividing the total revenue from the sale of a given output by that volume of output.
WORKING CAPITAL
Money used to pay for day-to-day running costs in a business and invested in stocks of finished and unfinished products.
PERMANENT CAPITAL
Money raised from the sale of shares by a company that it will never need to repay.
PRIMARY SECTOR
Extractive industries or those producing natural resources.
SECONDARY SECTOR
All manufacturing and construction industries.
TERTIARY SECTOR
Service industries form this sector of an economy.
IMMIGRATION
Inward migration, the introduction of people from overseas into the population of a country.
EMIGRATION
The act of leaving your country to live overseas.
NET MIGRATION
The difference between the number of immigrants and emigrants to and from a country per period of time.
CONSUMER COOPERATIVE
A business organization owned by its customers and run for their mutual benefit.
WORKER COOPERATIVE
A business organization owned and managed by its worker-owners.
LABOUR DISECONOMIES
Rising unit costs resulting from shortages of labour or increasing disputes with trade unions as a firm grows beyond its optimum size.
MANAGEMENT DISECONOMIES
Rising unit costs resulting from an increase in management costs as a firm’s size increases – for example, communication problems caused by too many layers of management or too many premises in too many locations to manage effectively.
LABOUR MOBILITY
The ease with which workers can move between different occupations or jobs.
LABOUR PRODUCTIVITY
The average output or revenue per worker per period of time.
OCCUPATIONAL IMMOBILITY
The inability of workers to move easily between from one occupation to another because they lack the skills required. It is often a feature of structural unemployment.
X-INEFFICIENCY
Increased costs resulting from ‘organizational slack’ or a lack of incentives in a firm that is protected from competition because it enjoys significant market power.
MANUFACTURING
Turning unprocessed natural resources and other unfinished products into other goods.
LEAN MANUFACTURING
Using the most modern production processes and working practices to continually reduce costs and waste, improve quality and increase output.
MASS PRODUCTION
The production, usually in a continuous flow, of a large amount of standardized products.
WORKING POPULATION
The economically active population or labour force in an economy.
DEPENDENT POPULATION
That part of a population that is economically inactive (not in paid employment) and therefore relies on others to produce the goods and services it consumes.
OVERPOPULATION
An economic condition in which there are too many people and too few resources.
POPULATION PYRAMID
A graph that shows the distribution of males and females in various age groups in a population.
DEPENDENCY RATIO
A measure that contrasts the number of people in the dependent population of a country with the working population in the same country.
ENTERPRISE
The skills and willingness to take the risks required to organize productive activity in a firm.
SME
A small or medium-sized enterprise.
MERGER
The combining of two or more business enterprises into a single enterprise.
TAKEOVER
The transfer of control of one company to another through the purchase of its shares.
PARTNERSHIP
A legal agreement between two or more people, usually no more than 20, to jointly own, finance and run a business, and to share any profits.
SLEEPING PARTNER
A person who invests money into a partnership, but is not involved in the day-to-day running of the business.
FINANCIAL INTERMEDIARY
An organization, such as a bank, that brings together customers who want to save money and others who wish to borrow it.
CENTRAL BANK
The main bank in an economy, responsible for managing the stability of its national currency and money supply, and for regulating its banking system.
COMMERCIAL BANK
A type of bank with individual and business customers that has retail branches in many towns and cities.
PUBLIC CORPORATION
A business organization created to perform a public sector function or to operate under government control, such as a municipal water company, public hospital or central bank.
Aim Institute of Economics 