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ACCOUNTING COST: The actual outlays or expenses incurred in production that shows up a firm's accounting statements or records. Accounting costs, 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 primarily interested in economic cost (also called opportunity cost). That fact is that accounting costs and economic costs aren't always the same. An opportunity or economic cost is the value of foregone production. Some economic costs, actually a lot of economic opportunity costs, never show up as accounting costs. Moreover, some accounting costs, while legal, bonified payments by a firm, are not associated with any sort of opportunity cost.
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                           PRODUCTION: The process of transforming the natural resources of the land into consumer satisfying consumption goods or productive capital goods. This transformation process involves the four scarce resources or factors of production--labor, capital, land, and entrepreneurship. Although production is generally the physical transformation of materials, it often involves the spatial relocation, or transportation, of commodities, as well. Scarcity is better addressed and living standards are enhanced by transforming natural resources of the land into more valuable and more satisfying goods. In their natural state raw materials generally provide less satisfaction of wants and needs than they do once processed, transformed, or fabricated into products.For example, most people obtain greater satisfaction from driving around in a finely crafted sports car than what they might be able to obtain directly from lumps of iron ore, silicon dioxide, bauxite ore, and other car-making materials buried in the Earth's crust. Most people prefer eating a finely crafted hot fudge sundae than what they might be able to obtain directly from the raw, unprocessed cocoa beans, vanilla beans, almond nuts, and maraschino cherries hanging on their respective trees and bushes. Although production is generally seen as the physical transformation of natural resources, it can also involve the spatial transportation of commodities. A commodity must be in the desired form as well as the desired location to be effectively used. For example, Duncan Thurly enjoys eating hot fudge sundaes (more so than having unprocessed cocoa beans, vanilla beans, almond nuts, and maraschino cherries hanging on their respective trees and bushes). However, the hot fudge sundae provides little satisfaction if it is located in the Hot Mamma Fudge Ice Cream Shoppe, but Duncan Thurly is in home in suburban Shady Valley ten miles away. Either Duncan needs to visit the Hot Mamma Fudge Ice Cream Shoppe or the hot fudge sundae needs to be shipped to Duncan's suburban residence. Either action requires the use of scarce resources. In the same manner that scarce resources are used to transform materials into a more suitable physical form, scarce resources are also needed to transport a commodity to a suitable spatial location.
Recommended Citation:PRODUCTION, AmosWEB Encyclonomic WEB*pedia, http://www.AmosWEB.com, AmosWEB LLC, 2000-2019. [Accessed: April 22, 2019].
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Okun's Law posits that the unemployment rate increases by 1% for every 2% gap between real GDP and full-employment real GDP.
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"The vacuum created by failure to communicate will quickly be filled with rumor, misrepresentations, drivel and poison. " -- C. Northcote Parkinson, historian
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SPE
Subgame Perfect Equilibrium
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