Saturday, December 19, 2009

List of Most Important Definitions For Unit 3: Business Economics and Economic Efficiency

Useful definitions for Edexcel candidates sitting for Economics Unit 3 in January 2010,

(1) Horizontal integration: When two firms in the same industry and at the same stage of production process merge

(2) Vertical integration: When two firms in the same industry but at different stage of production process merge

(3) Conglomerate integration: When two firms in a totally unconnected industry merge

(4) Fixed costs: Costs that do not vary with amount of output produced

(5) Variable costs: Costs that vary with amount of output produced

(6) Average costs (AC): Total costs per unit of output

(7) Marginal costs (MC): An additional cost incurred due to extra one unit of output produced

(8) Average fixed costs (AFC): Total fixed costs per unit of output

(9) Average variable costs (AVC): Total variable costs per unit of output

(10) Marginal revenue (MR): An additional revenue due to extra one unit of output sold

(11) Perfect competition: A market with huge number of sellers, where there is perfect information, firms being price taker, goods produced are identical and there is freedom of entry and exit

(12) Monopoly: A market with only one producer/ Legally a market is considered as monopoly when there is a firm that conquers more than 25% market share

(13) Oligopoly: A market with few large firms which are highly interdependent

(14) Monopolistic competition: A market with many sellers (not as many as in perfect market) and goods produced are identical but differentiated through branding

(15) Revenue maximisation: When firms choose to produce at an output where MR = 0

(16) Sales maximisation: When firms choose to produce at an output where AC = AR

(17) Profit maximisation: When firms choose to produce at an output where MC = MR

(18) Productive efficiency: When firms choose to produce output where long run average costs curve is minimised

(19) Allocative efficiency: A situation where there is optimal allocation of goods & services & it happens where P = MC/ AR = MC

(20) Price discrimination: A practice of selling the same good but to different market at different price

(21) Concentration ratio: The percentage of total sales contributed by the top 3 to 5 firms in the industry

(22) Contestable market: A market with low barriers to entry & where costs of exit is low

(23) Sunk costs: Costs that are irrecoverable upon exiting the industry

(24) Predatory pricing: Practice of selling a good at loss making level in order to drive out competitors

(25) Limit pricing: Practice of selling a good at just below the predicted AC curve of potential entrants to make the entrance into the industry not profitable

(26) Restrictive practices: Tactics used by producers to limit amount of competition in the market

(27) Collusion: Collective agreements between producers which restricts competition

(28) Tacit collusion: When firms collude without having any formal agreement been reached or even without any explicit communication between the firms having taking place

(29) Price leadership: When one firm, the price leader sets its own price & other firms in the market se their prices in relationship to the price leader

(30) X-inefficiency: Inefficiency that occurs when a firm fails to minimise its costs of production

(31) Competition Commission: An independent body/ tribunal set up to oversee UK competition policy & enforce the monopolies, mergers & restrictive practice act

(32) Office of Fair Trading (OFT): Established to promote fair competition & deals with violations under monopoly. Mergers & restrictive practices legislation

(33) RPI-X: RPI is retail price index, a measurement of inflation while X is expected fall in costs due to gain in efficiency

(34) RPI+K: RPI is retail price index, a measurement of inflation while K is capital investment requirement

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

On definition 19 of the Unit 3 definition list, when it has / does that mean 'divided by' or does it mean 'or'?