Economics for Managers - Chapter 1

The branch of economics that analyzes the decisions that individual consumers, firms, and industries make as they produce, buy, and sell goods and services.

Microeconomics applied to business decision making.

The amounts of money that are charged for goods and services in a market economy. Prices act as signals that influence the behavior of both consumers and producers of these goods and services.

The final goods and services produced and sold by firms in a market economy.

The factors of production, such as land, labor, capital, raw materials, and entrepreneurship, that are used to produce the outputs, or final goods and services, that are bought and sold in a market economy.

The branch of economics that focuses on the overall level of economic activity, changes in the price level, and the amount of unemployment by analyzing group or aggregate behavior in different sectors of the economy.

The price of one good in relation to the price of another, similar good, which is the way prices are defined in microeconomics.

The institutions and mechaanisms used for the buying and selling of goods and services. The four major types of markets in microeconomic analysis are:

• 1) perfect competition
• 2) monopolistic competition
• 3) oligopoly
• 4) monopoly

A market structure characterized by a large number of firms in an industry, an undifferentiated product, ease of entry into the market, and complete information available to participants.

A characteristic of a perfectly competitive firm in which the firm cannot influence the price of its product, but can sell any amount of its output at the price established by the market.

The difference between the total revenue that a firm receives for selling its product and the total cost of producing that product.

The ability of a firm to influence the prices of its products and develop other competitive strategies that enable it to earn large profits over longer periods of tiome.

Market structures of monopolistic competition, ologopoly, and monopoly, in which firms have some degree of markets power.

A market structure characterized by a single firm producing a product with no close substitutes.

Structural, legal, or regulatory characteristics of a firm and its market that keep other firms from easily producing the same or similar products at the same cost.

A market structure characterized by a large number of small firms that have some market power as a result of producing differentiated products. This market power can be competed away over time.

A market structure characterized by competition among a small number of large firms that have market power, but that must take their rivals' actions into account when developing their own competitive straegies.

The assumed goal of firms, which is to develop strategies to earn the largest amount of profit possible. This can be accomplished by focusing on revenues, costs, or both.

The macroeconomic model that portrays the level of economic activity as a flow of expenditures from consumers to firms, or producers, as consumers purchase goods and services produced by these firms. This flow then returns to consumers as income received from the production process.

A measure of the overall level of prices in the economy.

The total amount of spending by households on durable goods, nondurable goods, and services in a given period of time.

The total amount of spending on nonresidential structures, equipment, software, residential structures, and business inventories in a given period of time.

The toatl amount of spending by federal, state, and local governments on consumption outlays for goods and services, depreciation charges for existing structures and equipment, and investment capital outlays for newly acquired structures and equipment in a given period of time.

The total amount of spending on exports (X) minus the total amount of spending on imports (M) or (F =X-M) in a given period of time.

The total amouint of spending on goods and services currently produced in one country and sold abroad to residents of other countries in a given period of time.

The total amount of spending on goods and services currently produced in other countries and sold to residents of a given country in a given period of time.

The comprehensive measure of the total market value of all currently produced final goods and services within a country in a given period of time by domestic and foreign-supplied resources.

Policies adopted by a country's central bank that influence the money supply, interest rates, and the amount of funds available for loans, which in turn, influence consumer and business spending.

Changes in taxing and spending by the executive and legislative branches of a country's national government that can be used to either stimulate or restrain the economy.