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When the value of a good to a consumer changes because the number of people using it changes. For instance, owning a phone becomes more valuable as more people are plugged into the telephone network. Network effects are sometimes called network externality, although this implies, often wrongly, that the benefits from being part of a network are a sort of market failure. They give a huge competitive advantage to the firm that owns the network. This incumbent advantage arises because a new entrant must persuade people to join a network that starts with fewer members, and thus may be less valuable to them than the network they are currently in. This is why markets for products with network effects are often dominated by only a few firms or a single monopoly. Some economists argue that many recent technological innovations, notably the Internet, have large positive network effects, which make possible much higher productivity and growth than in the past.
Industry:Economy
A measure used to help decide whether or not to proceed with an investment. Net means that both the costs and benefits of the investment are included. To calculate net present value (NPV), first add together all the expected benefits from the investment, now and in the future. Then add together all the expected costs. Then work out what these future benefits and costs are worth now by adjusting future cashflow using an appropriate discount rate. Then subtract the costs from the benefits. If the NPV is negative, then the investment cannot be justified by the expected returns. If the NPV is positive, it can, although it pays to make comparisons with the NPVs of alternative investment opportunities before going ahead.
Industry:Economy
The school of economics that developed the free-market ideas of classical economics into a full-scale model of how an economy works. The best-known neo-classical economist was Alfred Marshall, the father of marginal analysis. Neo-classical thinking, which mostly assumes that markets tend towards equilibrium, was attacked by Keynes and became unfashionable during the Keynesian-dominated decades after the Second World War. But, thanks to economists such as Milton Friedman, many neo-classical ideas have since become widely accepted and uncontroversial.
Industry:Economy
A way of building redistribution into the taxation system by taking money from people with high incomes and paying it to people with low incomes. Because it takes place automatically through the tax system, it may attach less stigma to the receipt of financial help than some other forms of welfare assistance. However, it may also discourage recipients from working to increase their income (see poverty trap), which is why some countries have introduced a form of negative income tax that is available only to the working poor. In the United States, this is known as the earned income tax credit.
Industry:Economy
Protection for your savings, in case your bank goes Bust. Arrangements vary around the world, but in most countries deposit insurance is required by the government and paid for by banks (and, ultimately, their customers), which contribute a small slice of their assets to a central, usually government-run, insurance fund. If a bank defaults, this fund guarantees its customers’ deposits, at least up to a certain amount. By reassuring banks’ customers that their cash is protected, deposit insurance aims to prevent them from panicking and causing a bank run, and thereby reduces systemic risk. The United States introduced it in 1933, after a massive bank panic led to widespread bankruptcy, deepening its depression. The downside of deposit insurance is that it creates a moral hazard. By insulating depositors from defaults, deposit insurance reduces their incentive to monitor banks closely. Also banks can take greater risks, safe in the knowledge that there is a state-financed safety net to catch them if they fall. There are no easy solutions to this moral hazard. One approach is to monitor what banks do very closely. This is easier said than done, not least because of the high cost. Another is to ensure capital adequacy by requiring banks to set aside, just in case, specified amounts of capital when they take on different amounts of risk. Alternatively, the state safety net could be shrunk, by splitting banks into two types: super-safe, government-insured “narrow banks” that stick to traditional business and invest only in secure assets; and uninsured institutions, “broad banks”, that could range more widely under a much lighter regulatory system. Savers who invested in a broad bank would probably earn much higher returns because it could invest in riskier assets; but they would also lose their shirts if it went bust. Yet another possible answer is to require every bank to finance a small proportion of its assets by selling subordinated debt to other institutions, with the stipulation that the yield on this debt must not be more than so many (say 50) basis points higher than the rate on a corresponding risk-free instrument. Subordinated debt (uninsured certificates of deposit) is simply junior debt. Its holders are at the back of the queue for their money if the bank gets into trouble and they have no safety net. Investors will buy subordinated debt at a yield quite close to the risk-free interest rate only if they are sure the bank is low risk. To sell its debt, the bank will have to persuade informed investors of this. If it cannot convince them it cannot operate. This exploits the fact that bankers know more about banking than do their supervisors. It asks banks not to be good citizens but to look only to their profits. Unlike the present regime, it exploits all the available information and properly aligns everybody’s incentives. This ingenious idea was first tried in Argentina, where it became a victim of the country's economic, banking and political crisis of 2001-02 before it really had a chance to prove itself.
Industry:Economy
People, and the statistical study of them. In the 200 years since Thomas Malthus forecast that population growth would result in mass starvation, dire predictions based on demographic trends have come to be taken with a pinch of salt. Even so, demography does matter. In developed countries, economists have studied the impact of the post-war “baby-boomer” population bulge as it has grown older. In the 1980s, as the bulge dominated the workforce, it may have contributed to a sharp, if temporary, rise in unemployment in many countries. Boomers starting to save for retirement may have increased demand for shares, so fuelling the bull stock market of the 1990s; as they retire and sell their shares for spending money, they may cause a long bear market. Furthermore, as they become elderly and retire, health-care spending and retirement pensions are likely to eat up a growing share of GDP. To the extent that these are provided by the state, this will mean increasing public spending and higher taxes. But whether they are provided by the state or by the private sector, the ageing of baby-boomers will impose a growing financial burden on the younger workers that have to support them (see replacement rate). Economists have tried to measure the extent of this burden using generational accounting, which looks at the amount of wealth transferred from one generation to another over the lifetimes of the members of each generation. Economists have also developed many different theories to explain why populations grow and why the fertility rate slowed sharply, to below the replacement rate, in many developed countries during the 1990s. One explanation is based on the notion that people have children so that there is somebody to look after them in old age. Fertility rates fell because the state increasingly looked after retired people, and infant mortality rates were lower so fewer births were required to ensure that there were some children around in the parental dotage. Also, with a lower probability of a child dying, it paid the parents to have fewer children and to channel their energy and resources into maximizing the human capital of the few. Alternatively, it may have had something to do with an important innovation: the cheap and easy availability of reliable contraception.
Industry:Economy
A graph showing the relationship between the price of a good and the amount of demand for it at different prices. (See also supply curve. )
Industry:Economy
One of the two words economists use most; the other is supply. These are the twin driving forces of the market economy. Demand is not just about measuring what people want; for economists, it refers to the amount of a good or service that people are both willing and able to buy. The demand curve measures the relationship between the price of a good and the amount of it demanded. Usually, as the price rises, fewer people are willing and able to buy it; in other words, demand falls (but see Giffen goods, normal goods and inferior goods). When demand changes, economists explain this in one of two ways. A movement along the demand curve occurs when a price change alters the quantity demanded; but if the price were to go back to where it was before, so would the amount demanded. A shift in the demand curve occurs when the amount demanded would be different from what it was previously at any chosen price, for example, if there is no change in the market price, but demand rises or falls. The slope of the demand curve indicates the elasticity of demand. For approaches to modeling demand see revealed preference. Policymakers seek to manipulate aggregate demand to keep the economy growing as fast as is possible without pushing up inflation. Keynesians try to manage demand through fiscal policy; monetarists prefer to use the money supply. Neither approach has been especially successful in practice, particularly when attempting to manage short-term demand through fine tuning.
Industry:Economy
Since 1930 it has been the norm in most developed countries for average prices to rise year after year. However, before 1930 deflation (falling prices) was as likely as inflation. On the eve of the First World War, for example, prices in the UK, overall, were almost exactly the same as they had been at the time of the great fire of London in 1666. Deflation is a persistent fall in the general price level of goods and services. It is not to be confused with a decline in prices in one economic sector or with a fall in the inflation rate (which is known as disinflation). Sometimes deflation can be harmless, perhaps even a good thing, if lower prices lift real income and hence spending power. In the last 30 years of the 19th century, for example, consumer prices fell by almost half in the United States, as the expansion of railways and advances in industrial technology brought cheaper ways to make everything. Yet annual real GDP growth over the period averaged more than 4%. Deflation is dangerous, however, more so even than inflation, when it reflects a sharp slump in demand, excess capacity and a shrinking money supply, as in the Great depression of the early 1930s. In the four years to 1933, American consumer prices fell by 25% and real GDP by 30%. Runaway deflation of this sort can be much more damaging than runaway inflation, because it creates a vicious spiral that is hard to escape. The expectation that prices will be lower tomorrow may encourage consumers to delay purchases, depressing demand and forcing firms to cut prices by even more. Falling prices also inflate the real burden of debt (that is, increase real interest rates) causing bankruptcy and bank failure. This makes deflation particularly dangerous for economies that have large amounts of corporate debt. Most serious of all, deflation can make monetary policy ineffective: nominal interest rates cannot be negative, so real rates can get stuck too high.
Industry:Economy
In the red – when more money goes out than comes in. A budget deficit occurs when public spending exceeds government revenue. A current account deficit occurs when exports and inflows from private and official transfers are worth less than imports and transfer outflows (see balance of payments).
Industry:Economy
