Business and Economics Flashcards
absenteeism
Habitual absence from work, thought
to reflect employee demoralization or dissatisfaction.
accounting
The system of recording and auditing
business transactions.
act of God
A natural catastrophe, e.g., a hurricane,
an earthquake, or a volcanic eruption. (See
volcano.)
✥ As a legal term relating to property damage, it appears
in insurance contracts: “After the flood,
Papovich was dismayed to discover that his house was
not insured against acts of God.” ✥ In contracts dealing
with the delivery of goods or services, the term is
used to protect the parties from litigation over delays
or failures in performance owing to circumstances beyond
their control.
actuary (ak-chooh-er-ee)
A mathematician who uses
statistics to calculate insurance premiums.
affluent society
A society in which scarcity of resources
is not the predominant condition, and a general
level of economic well-being has been achieved by
most members of society. The term was made current
by John Kenneth Galbraith in The Affluent Society,
which described conditions in the United States after
World War II.
✥ Conventional economic theory is based on the
assumption that resources are scarce. Therefore, it
makes increasing production in the private sector
and limiting interference and regulation from the
government a priority. In Galbraith’s affluent society,
this priority is misplaced because scarcity is not predominant.
The continued pursuit of conventional economic
objectives in an affluent society leads to the
conditions Galbraith observed in postwar America:
private-sector affluence and public-sector squalor. For
example, affluence in the private sector led to the mass
availability of automobiles. Because public-sector interference
(in the form of regulation and taxation)
was discouraged, however, governments could not
afford to build adequate roadways to accommodate
those automobiles.
agribusiness
The part of the economy devoted to
the production, processing, and distribution of
food, including the financial institutions that fund
these activities.
✥ Agribusiness emphasizes agriculture as a big business
rather than as the work of small family farms.
American Stock Exchange
Traditionally, the second
largest stock exchange in the United States, after
the New York Stock Exchange. The American Stock
Exchange is in New York City. It is often identified in
financial pages as AMEX. In , AMEX merged with
the NASD, which runs the NASDAQ exchange.
amortization (am-uhr-tuh-zay-shuhn, uh-mawr-tuhzay-
shuhn)
A term that refers either to the gradual
paying off of a debt in regular installments over a period
of time or to the depreciation of the “book
value” (that is, the standard assessed value) of an asset
over a period of time.
annuity (uh-nooh-uh-tee)
A sum of money payable
yearly or at regular intervals.
✥ Many people’s retirement funds are set up to be
paid in annuities
appraisal
A formal evaluation of property by an expert,
used to establish its market value.
assembly line
A line of factory workers and equipment
along which a product being assembled passes
consecutively from operation to operation until completed.
✥ Assembly lines are found in many industries but
are particularly associated with automobile manufacturing.
assessment
The appraisal of property for the purposes
of taxation.
asset
A possession that can be turned into cash to
cover liabilities.
audit
The examination by an outside party of the
accounts of an individual or corporation.
