经济学原理名词解释(英文版)VIP免费

经济学原理名词解释 CHAPTER 1 Scarcity : the limited nature of society’s resources. Economics : the study of how society manages its scarce resources. Efficiency : the property of society getting the most it can from its scarce resources. Equity : the property of distributing economic prosperity fairly among the members of society. Opportunity cost : whatever must be given up to obtain some item. Marginal changes : small incremental adjustments to a plan of action. Market economy : an economy that allocates resources through the decentralized decisions of many firms and households as they interact in markets for goods and services. Market failure : a situation in which a market left on its own fails to allocate resources efficiently. Externality : the impact of one person’s actions on the well-being of a bystander. Market power : the ability of a single economic actor (or small group of actors) to have a substantial influence on market prices. Productivity : the quantity of goods and services produced from each hour of a worker’s time. Inflation : an increase in the overall level of prices in the economy. Phillips curve : a curve that shows the short-run tradeoff between inflation and unemployment. Business cycle : fluctuations in economic activity, such as employment and production. CHAPTER 2 Circular-flow diagram : a visual model of the economy that shows how dollars flow through markets among households and firms. Production possibilities frontier : a graph that shows the combinations of output that the economy can possibly produce given the available factors of production and the available production technology. Microeconomics : the study of how households and firms make decisions and how...