Glossary Terms:

Decision made or course of action taken when faced with a set of alternatives.

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

An amount that must be paid or spent to buy or obtain something. The effort, loss or sacrifice necessary to achieve or obtain something.

The allocation or dividing up of the goods and services a society produces.

The institutional framework of formal and informal rules that a society uses to determine what to produce, how to produce and how to distribute goods and services.

Tangible objects that satisfy economic wants.

Payments earned by households for selling or renting their productive resources. May include salaries, wages, interest and dividends.

Money paid regularly, at a particular rate, for the use of borrowed money.

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.

The amount of money that people pay when they buy a good or service; the amount they receive when they sell a good or service.

People and firms that use resources to make goods and services.

The basic kinds of resources used to produce goods and services: land or natural resources, human resources (including labor and entrepreneurship), and capital.

Activities performed by people, firms or government agencies to satisfy economic wants.

Use money now to buy goods and services.

An economy in which customs and habits from the past are used to resolve most economic issues of production and distribution.

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.