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ECON 200 Final
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Employed | Paid employees, self-employed, and unpaid workers in a family business. |
Unemployed | People not working who have looked for work during previous 4 weeks. |
Natural rate of unemployment | Normal rate of unemployment around which the unemployment rate fluctuates. |
Cyclical unemployment | The deviation of unemployment from its natural rate. |
Frictional unemployment | Occurs when workers spend time searching for the jobs that best suit their skills and tastes. |
Structural unemployment | Occurs when number of jobs available in some labor markets is insufficient to provide a job for everyone who wants one, usually longer term. Occurs when wage > equilibrium. |
Sectoral shifts | Changes in the composition of demand among industries of regions. |
Minimum wage laws | May exceed the equilibrium wage for the least skilled and least experienced workers, Quantity of labor supplied > Quantity of labor demanded. |
Unions | worker association that bargains with employers. Exert their market power to negotiate higher wages for workers. The typical union worker earns 10-20% higher wages and gets more benefits. Quantity of labor demanded decrease which results in unemployment. |
Insiders vs. Outsiders | Insiders are workers who remain employed, are better off. Outsiders are workers who lose their jobs and are worse off. Some outsiders go to non-unionized labor markets which increase labor supply and increase wages in those markets. |
3 efficiency wages | 1. Worker Health: pay higher wages to get healthier workers. 2. Worker Turnover: paying higher wages to give workers more incentive to stay. 3. Worker quality: pay higher wages attracts better job applicants, increase quality. |
Barter | Exchange one good or service for another. |
Medium of Exchange | Item that buyers give to sellers when they want to purchase goods and services. |
Unit of Account | Yardstick people use to post price and record debts. |
Store of Value | Item that people can use to transfer purchasing power from the present to the future. |
Liquidity | The ease with which an asset can be converted into the economy's medium of exchange. |
Commodity Money | Money that takes the form of a commodity with intrinsic value. |
Fiat money | Money without intrinsic value, used as money because of government decree. |
Money stock | The quantity of money circulating in the economy. |
Currency | Paper bills and coins in the hands of the public. |
Demand deposits | Balances in bank accounts that depositors can access on demand. |
M1 | Currency, demand deposits, traveler's chcks, and other checkable deposits. |
M2 | Everything in M1 plus saving deposits, small time deposits, money market mutual funds, and a few minor categories. |
Central Bank | Oversee banking system and regulate money. |
2 Roles of the Central Bank | 1. Regulate banks and ensure banking health: monitors each bank's financial condition, facilitates bank transactions, makes loans to banks. 2. Monetary policy of FOMC: control the money supply ~ quantity of money available in the economy. |
Fractional reserve banking system | Banks keep a fraction of deposits as reserves and use the rest to make loans. |
Reserve requirements | Regulations on the minimum number of reserves that banks must hold against deposits. |
Reserve Ratio, R | Fraction of deposits that banks hold as reserves. |
T-account | A simplified account statement that shows a bank's assets and liabilities. Bank's liabilities include deposits, assets include loans and reserves. |
The money mutiplier | The amount of money the banking system generates with each dollar of reserves. |
Bank capital (owner's equity) | The resources a bank obtains by issuing equity to its owners. |
Leverage | The use of borrowed funds to supplement existing funds for investment purposes. |
Leverage ratio | The ratio of assets to bank capital. |
Capital requirement | a government regulation that specifies the minimum amount of capital, intended to ensure banks will be able to pay off depositors and debts. |
Credit crunch | The shortage of capital induced in the banks to reduced lending. |
The Fed can change the money supply by | Chaing quantity of reserves, changing the reserve ratio and the money multiplier. |
Open Market Operations (OMOs) | The purchase and sale of U.S. gov bonds by the fed. |
To increase the bank reserves and money supply | -The fed buys a gov. bond from a bank -> pays by depositing new reserves in that bank reserve account. -> with more reserves, the bank can make more loans and increase the money supply. |
Under fractional-reserve banking | banks don't have enough reserves to pay off all depositors which means banks have to close. |
The Federal Funds Rate | Interest rate at which banks make overnight loans to other banks. |
Inflation vs. deflation vs. hyperinflation | I: Increase in the overall level of prices. D: Decrease in the overall level of prices. H: extraordinarily high rate of inflation. |
P = price level | The price of a basket of goods measured in money. |
Relative price | Price of one good relative to (divided by) another. |
Real wage | Price of labor relative to price of output. |
Classical Dichotomy | The theoretical separation of real and nominal variables. |
The Neutrality of Money | The proposition that changes in the money supply do not affect real variables. |
The velocity of Money | The rate at which money changes hands. |
Inflation Tax | When tax revenue is inadequate and ability to borrow is limited, government may print money to pay for its spending. |
Inflation fallacy | Most people think inflation erodes real outcomes. |
Shoe leather costs | The resources wasted when inflation encourages people to decrease money holdings. |
Menu costs | The costs of changing prices. |
Misallocation of resources from relative price variability | Firms don't all raise prices at the same time, so relative prices can vary, which distorts the allocation of resources. |
Confusion and inconvenience | Inflation change the yardstick we use to measure transactions. |
Tax distortions | Inflation makes nominal income grow faster than real income. |
Closed economy | The economy doesn't interact with other economies in the world. |
Open economy | Economy that interacts freely with other economies around the world. |
Exports | Goods and services that are produced domestically and sold abroad. |
Imports | Goods and services that are produced abroad and sold domestically. |
Trade surplus | Country sells more goods and services abroad. |
Trade deficit | County sells less goods and services abroad. |
Net capital outflow (net foreign investment) | Purchase of foreign affairs by domestic residents. |
Capital outflow | Domestic purchases of foreign assets. |
Capital inflow | Foreign purchases of domestic assets. |
The nominal exchange rate | Rate at which one country's currency trades for another. |
Appreciation | Increase in the value of a currency as measured by the amount of foreign currency it can buy. |
Real exchange rate | Rate at which goods and services of one country trade for the goods and services of another. |
Purchasing Power Parity | A theory of exchange rates, whereby a unit of any given currency should be able to buy the same quantity of goods in all countries. |
Law of one price | A good should sell for the same price in all locations. |
Arbitrage | Take advantage of price differences for the same item in different markets. |
Trade policy | A government policy that directly influences the quantity of goods and services that a country imports or exports. |
Tariff | A tax on imports. |
Import quota | A limit on the quantity of imports. |
"Voluntary export restrictions" | The government pressures another country to restrict its exports. |
Capital Flight | A large and sudden reduction in the demand for assets located in a country. |