MATERIALS BALANCE: A hard and fast rule that the total amount of stuff removed from the natural environment will be eventually returned, probably as pollution. This is based on a fundamental law of physics that says material can be neither created nor destroyed, but only transformed. During any given period (such as a year) the quantity of materials returned to the environment is the difference between the quantity extracted and the quantity used by the economy.

     See also | environment | pollution | natural resources | pollution types | scarcity rent | Pigouvian tax | recycling | Coase theorem | command and control | pollution rights market |

MATERIALS BALANCE, AmosWEB GLOSS*arama, http://www.AmosWEB.com, AmosWEB LLC, 2000-2025. [Accessed: July 13, 2025].

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An actual outlay or expenses incurred in the production of a good that shows up in a firm's accounting statements and records. Accounting cost is an explicit payment (that is, money changing hands) incurred by a firm. Accounting cost, while very important to accountants, company CEOs, shareholders, and the Internal Revenue Service, is only minimally important to economists. The reason is that economists are more interested in economic cost (also called opportunity cost), which is the value of foregone production.

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