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The more competition there is, the more likely are firms to be efficient and prices to be low. Economists have identified several different sorts of competition. Perfect competition is the most competitive market imaginable in which everybody is a price taker. Firms earn only normal profits, the bare minimum profit necessary to keep them in business. If firms earn more than this (excess profits) other firms will enter the market and drive the price level down until there are only normal profits to be made. Most markets exhibit some form of imperfect or monopolistic competition. There are fewer firms than in a perfectly competitive market and each can to some degree create barriers to entry. Thus firms can earn some excess profits without a new entrant being able to compete to bring prices down. The least competitive market is a monopoly, dominated by a single firm that can earn substantial excess profits by controlling either the amount of output in the market or the price (but not both). In this sense it is a price setter. When there are few firms in a market (oligopoly) they have the opportunity to behave as a monopolist through some form of collusion (see cartel). A market dominated by a single firm does not necessarily have monopoly power if it is a contestable market. In such a market, a single firm can dominate only if it produces as efficiently as possible and does not earn excess profits. If it becomes inefficient or earns excess profits, another more efficient or less profitable firm will enter the market and dominate it instead.
Industry:Economy
Paul Samuelson, one of the 20th century’s greatest economists, once remarked that the principle of comparative advantage was the only big idea that economics had produced that was both true and surprising. It is also one of the oldest theories in economics, usually ascribed to David Ricardo. The theory underpins the economic case for free trade. But it is often misunderstood or misrepresented by opponents of free trade. It shows how countries can gain from trading with each other even if one of them is more efficient – it has an absolute advantage – in every sort of economic activity. Comparative advantage is about identifying which activities a country (or firm or individual) is most efficient at doing. To see how this theory works imagine two countries, Alpha and Omega. Each country has 1,000 workers and can make two goods, computers and cars. Alpha’s economy is far more productive than Omega’s. To make a car, Alpha needs two workers, compared with Omega’s four. To make a computer, Alpha uses 10 workers, compared with Omega’s 100. If there is no trade, and in each country half the workers are in each industry, Alpha produces 250 cars and 50 computers and Omega produces 125 cars and 5 computers. What if the two countries specialize? Although Alpha makes both cars and computers more efficiently than Omega (it has an absolute advantage), it has a bigger edge in computer making. So it now devotes most of its resources to that industry, employing 700 workers to make computers and only 300 to make cars. This raises computer output to 70 and cuts car production to 150. Omega switches entirely to cars, turning out 250. World output of both goods has risen. Both countries can consume more of both if they trade, but at what price? Neither will want to import what it could make more cheaply at home. So Alpha will want at least 5 cars per computer, and Omega will not give up more than 25 cars per computer. Suppose the terms of trade are fixed at 12 cars per computer and 120 cars are exchanged for 10 computers. Then Alpha ends up with 270 cars and 60 computers, and Omega with 130 cars and 10 computers. Both are better off than they would be if they did not trade. This is true even though Alpha has an absolute advantage in making both computers and cars. The reason is that each country has a different comparative advantage. Alpha’s edge is greater in computers than in cars. Omega, although a costlier producer in both industries, is a less expensive maker of cars. If each country specializes in products in which it has a comparative advantage, both will gain from trade. In essence, the theory of comparative advantage says that it pays countries to trade because they are different. It is impossible for a country to have no comparative advantage in anything. It may be the least efficient at everything, but it will still have a comparative advantage in the industry in which it is relatively least bad. There is no reason to assume that a country’s comparative advantage will be static. If a country does what it has a comparative advantage in and sees its income grow as a result, it can afford better education and infrastructure. These, in turn, may give it a comparative advantage in other economic activities in future.
Industry:Economy
The enemy of capitalism and now nearly extinct. Invented by Karl Marx, who predicted that feudalism and capitalism would be succeeded by the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, during which the state would “wither away” and economic life would be organized to achieve “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”. The Soviet Union was the most prominent attempt to put communism into practice and the result was conspicuous failure, although some modern followers of Marx reckon that the Soviets missed the point.
Industry:Economy
A comparatively homogeneous product that can typically be bought in bulk. It usually refers to a raw material – oil, cotton, cocoa, silver – but can also describe a manufactured product used to make other things, for example, microchips used in personal computers. Commodities are often traded on commodity exchanges. On average, the price of natural commodities has fallen steadily in real terms in defiance of some predictions that growing consumption of non-renewables such as copper would force prices up. At times the oil price has risen sharply in real terms, most notably during the 1970s, but this was due not to the exhaustion of limited supplies but to rationing by the OPEC cartel, or war, or fear of it, particularly in the oil-rich Middle East.
Industry:Economy
The process of becoming a commodity. Micro¬chips, for example, started out as a specialized technical innovation, costing a lot and earning their makers a high profit on each chip. Now chips are largely homogeneous: the same chip can be used for many things, and any manufacturer willing to invest in some fairly standardized equipment can make them. As a result, competition is fierce and prices and profit margins are low. Some economists argue that in today's economy the faster pace of innovation will make the process of commoditization increasingly common.
Industry:Economy
When a government controls all aspects of economic activity (see, for example, communism).
Industry:Economy
An asset pledged by a borrower that may be seized by a lender to recover the value of a loan if the borrower fails to meet the required interest charges or repayments.
Industry:Economy
An economy that does not take part in inter¬national trade; the opposite of an open economy. At the turn of the century about the only notable example left of a closed economy is North Korea (see autarky).
Industry:Economy
The dominant theory of economics from the 18th century to the 20th century, when it evolved into Neo-classical economics. Classical economists, who included Adam Smith, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, believed that the pursuit of individual self-interest produced the greatest possible economic benefits for society as a whole through the power of the invisible hand. They also believed that an economy is always in equilibrium or moving towards it. Equilibrium was ensured in the labor market by movements in wages and in the capital market by changes in the rate of interest. The interest rate ensured that total savings in an economy were equal to total investment. In disequilibrium, higher interest rates encouraged more saving and less investment, and lower rates meant less saving and more investment. When the demand for labor rose or fell, wages would also rise or fall to keep the workforce at full employment. In the 1920s and 1930s, John Maynard Keynes attacked some of the main beliefs of classical and neo-classical economics, which became unfashionable. In particular, he argued that the rate of interest was determined or influenced by the speculative actions of investors in bonds and that wages were inflexible downwards, so that if demand for labor fell, the result would be higher unemployment rather than cheaper workers.
Industry:Economy
A fervently free-market economic philosophy long associated with the University of Chicago. At times, especially when Keynesian economics was the orthodoxy in much of the world, the Chicago School was regarded as a bastion of unworldly extremism. However, from the late 1970s it came to be regarded as mainstream by many and Chicago trained economists often played a crucial part in the implementation of policies of low inflation and market liberalization that swept the world during the 1980s and 1990s. By 2003, boasted the University of Chicago, some 22 of the 49 then winners of the Nobel Prize for economics had been faculty members, students or researchers there.
Industry:Economy
