SavingSaving is income not spent, or deferred consumption. Methods of saving include putting money aside in, for example, a deposit account, a pension account, an investment fund, or as cash. Saving also involves reducing expenditures, such as recurring costs. In terms of personal finance, saving generally specifies low-risk preservation of money, as in a deposit account, versus investment, wherein risk is a lot higher; in economics more broadly, it refers to any income not used for immediate consumption.
Greenhouse gas emissionsGreenhouse gas emissions (abbreviated as GHG emissions) from human activities strengthen the greenhouse effect, contributing to climate change. Carbon dioxide (), from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas, is one of the most important factors in causing climate change. The largest emitters are China followed by the US, although the United States has higher emissions per capita. The main producers fueling the emissions globally are large oil and gas companies.
ConsumerA consumer is a person or a group who intends to order, or use purchased goods, products, or services primarily for personal, social, family, household and similar needs, who is not directly related to entrepreneurial or business activities. The term most commonly refers to a person who purchases goods and services for personal use. "Consumers, by definition, include us all," said President John F. Kennedy, offering his definition to the United States Congress on March 15, 1962.
Gross domestic productGross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced in a specific time period by a country or countries. GDP is most often used by the government of a single country to measure its economic health. Due to its complex and subjective nature, this measure is often revised before being considered a reliable indicator. GDP definitions are maintained by several national and international economic organizations.
Neoclassical synthesisThe neoclassical synthesis (NCS), neoclassical–Keynesian synthesis, or just neo-Keynesianism was a neoclassical economics academic movement and paradigm in economics that worked towards reconciling the macroeconomic thought of John Maynard Keynes in his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936). It was formulated most notably by John Hicks (1937), Franco Modigliani (1944), and Paul Samuelson (1948), who dominated economics in the post-war period and formed the mainstream of macroeconomic thought in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.
Agent (economics)In economics, an agent is an actor (more specifically, a decision maker) in a model of some aspect of the economy. Typically, every agent makes decisions by solving a well- or ill-defined optimization or choice problem. For example, buyers (consumers) and sellers (producers) are two common types of agents in partial equilibrium models of a single market. Macroeconomic models, especially dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models that are explicitly based on microfoundations, often distinguish households, firms, and governments or central banks as the main types of agents in the economy.
Output (economics)Output in economics is the "quantity (or quality) of goods or services produced in a given time period, by a firm, industry, or country", whether consumed or used for further production. The concept of national output is essential in the field of macroeconomics. It is national output that makes a country rich, not large amounts of money. Output is the result of an economic process that has used inputs to produce a product or service that is available for sale or use somewhere else.
ConsumerismConsumerism is a social and economic order in which the goals of many individuals include the acquisition of goods and services beyond those that are necessary for survival or for traditional displays of status. Consumerism has historically existed in many societies, with modern consumerism originating in western Europe before the Industrial Revolution and becoming widespread around 1900.
PhysiocracyPhysiocracy ( physiocratie; from the Greek for "government of nature") is an economic theory developed by a group of 18th-century Age of Enlightenment French economists who believed that the wealth of nations derived solely from the value of "land agriculture" or "land development" and that agricultural products should be highly priced. Their theories originated in France and were most popular during the second half of the 18th century. Physiocracy became one of the first well-developed theories of economics.
MicrofoundationsMicrofoundations are an effort to understand macroeconomic phenomena in terms of economic agents' behaviors and their interactions. Research in microfoundations explores the link between macroeconomic and microeconomic principles in order to explore the aggregate relationships in macroeconomic models. During recent decades, macroeconomists have attempted to combine microeconomic models of individual behaviour to derive the relationships between macroeconomic variables.
