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Also called resource cost advantage. The ability of a party (whether an individual, firm, or country) to produce a greater quantity of a good, product, or service than competitors using the same amount of resources. absorption The total demand for all final marketed goods and services by all economic agents resident in an economy, regardless of the origin of the goods and services themselves ...
Welfare economics is a branch of economics that uses microeconomic techniques to evaluate economic well-being, especially relative to competitive general equilibrium, with a focus on economic efficiency and income distribution. [13] In general usage, including by economists outside the above context, welfare refers to a form of transfer payment ...
The earlier term for the discipline was "political economy", but since the late 19th century, it has commonly been called "economics". [22] The term is ultimately derived from Ancient Greek οἰκονομία (oikonomia) which is a term for the "way (nomos) to run a household (oikos)", or in other words the know-how of an οἰκονομικός (oikonomikos), or "household or homestead manager".
James Stuart (1767) authored the first book in English with 'political economy' in its title, explaining it just as: . Economy in general [is] the art of providing for all the wants of a family, so the science of political economy seeks to secure a certain fund of subsistence for all the inhabitants, to obviate every circumstance which may render it precarious; to provide everything necessary ...
Economics focuses on the study of economic goods, i.e. goods that are scarce; in other words, producing the good requires expending effort or resources. Economic goods contrast with free goods such as air, for which there is an unlimited supply.
In the late 1950s, the economic growth in America and Europe—often called Wirtschaftswunder (German for economic miracle) —brought up a new form of economy: mass consumption economy. In 1958, John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) was the first to speak of an affluent society in his book The Affluent Society. [21]
An economic system, or economic order, [1] is a system of production, resource allocation and distribution of goods and services within a society. It includes the combination of the various institutions , agencies, entities, decision-making processes, and patterns of consumption that comprise the economic structure of a given community.
Positive economics as a science concerns the investigation of economic behavior. [4] It deals with empirical facts as well as cause-and-effect relationships. It emphasizes that economic theories must be consistent with existing observations and produce precise, verifiable predictions about the phenomena under investigation.