Glossary Terms:

A written order to a financial institution directing the financial institution to pay a stated amount of money, as instructed, from the customer's account.

People who use goods and services to satisfy their personal needs and not for resale or in the production of other goods and services.

One who draws upon his or her skills and initiative to launch a new business venture with the aim of making a profit. Often a risk-taker, inclined to see opportunity when others do not.

A characteristic of people who assume the risk of organizing productive resources to produce goods and services; a resource.

A new idea or method.

Someone who creates or devises a new process, application, machine, or article of application.

An economy that relies on a system of interdependent market prices to allocate goods, services, and productive resources and to coordinate the diverse plans of consumers and producers, all of them pursuing their own self-interest.

Anything that is generally accepted as final payment for goods and services; serves as a medium of exchange, a store of value and a standard of value. Characteristics of money are portability, stability in value, uniformity, durability and acceptance.

A good or service that can be used to satisfy a want.

A process of manufacturing, growing, designing, or otherwise using productive resources to create goods or services used to to satisfy a want.

Income received for entrepreneurial skills and risk taking, calculated by subtracting all of a firm's explicit and implicit costs from its total revenues.

The chance of losing money.

An abstract measure of the satisfaction consumers derive from consuming goods and services.

Effort applied to achieve a purpose or result, often for pay; skills and knowledge put to use to get something done; employment at a job or in a position; occupation, profession, business, trade, craft, etc.