Comments
The city states of Sumer developed a trade and market economy based originally on the commodity money of the Shekel which was a certain weight
measure of barley, while the Babylonians and their city state neighbors later developed the earliest system of economics using a metric of various
commodities, that was fixed in a legal code.[12] The early law codes from Sumer could be considered the first (written) economic formula, and had many
attributes still in use in the current price system today... such as codified amounts of money for business deals (interest rates), fines in money for 'wrong
doing', inheritance rules, laws concerning how private property is to be taxed or divided, etc.[13][14] For a summary of the laws, see Babylonian law and
Ancient economic thought.
Economic thought dates from earlier Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, Indian, Chinese, Persian and Arab civilizations. Notable writers include Aristotle,
Chanakya (also known as Kautilya), Qin Shi Huang, Thomas Aquinas and Ibn Khaldun through to the 14th century. Joseph Schumpeter initially considered
the late scholastics of the 14th to 17th centuries as "coming nearer than any other group to being the 'founders' of scientific economics" as to monetary,
interest, and value theory within a natural-law perspective.[15] After discovering Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah, however, Schumpeter later viewed Ibn
Khaldun as being the closest forerunner of modern economics, [16] as many of his economic theories were not known in Europe until relatively modern
times.[17]
Nonetheless, recent research indicates that the Indian scholar-philosopher Chanakya (c. 340-293 BCE) predates Ibn Khaldun by a millennium and a half as
the forerunner of modern economics, [18][19][20][21] and has written more expansively on this subject, particularly on political economy. His magnum opus,
the Arthashastra (The Science of Wealth and Welfare), [22] is the genesis of economic concepts that include the opportunity cost, the demand-supply
framework, diminishing returns, marginal analysis, public goods, the distinction between the short run and the long run, asymmetric information and the
producer surplus.[23] In his capacity as an advisor to the throne of the Maurya Empire of ancient India, he has also advised on the sources and prerequisites
of economic growth, obstacles to it and on tax incentives to encourage economic growth.[24]
1638 painting of a French seaport during the heyday of mercantilismTwo other groups, later called 'mercantilists' and 'physiocrats', more directly influenced
the subsequent development of the subject. Both groups were associated with the rise of economic nationalism and modern capitalism in Europe.
Mercantilism was an economic doctrine that flourished from the 16th to 18th century in a prolific pamphlet literature, whether of merchants or statesmen. It
held that a nation's wealth depended on its accumulation of gold and silver. Nations without access to mines could obtain gold and silver from trade only by
selling goods abroad and restricting imports other than of gold and silver. The doctrine called for importing cheap raw materials to be used in
manufacturing goods, which could be exported, and for state regulation to impose protective tariffs on foreign manufactured goods and prohibit
manufacturing in the colonies.[25][26]
Physiocrats, a group of 18th century French thinkers and writers, developed the idea of the economy as a circular flow of income and output. Adam Smith
described their system "with all its imperfections" as "perhaps the purest approximation to the truth that has yet been published" on the subject. Physiocrats
believed that only agricultural production generated a clear surplus over cost, so that agriculture was the basis of all wealth.
Thus, they opposed the mercantilist policy of promoting manufacturing and trade at the expense of agriculture, including import tariffs. Physiocrats
advocated replacing administratively costly tax collections with a single tax on income of land owners. Variations on such a land tax were taken up by
subsequent economists (including Henry George a century later) as a relatively non-distortionary source of tax revenue. In reaction against copious
mercantilist trade regulations, the physiocrats advocated a policy of laissez-faire, which called for minimal government intervention in the economy.[27][28]
Thomas Robert Malthus used the idea of diminishing returns to explain low living standards. Population, he argued, tended to increase geometrically,
outstripping the production of food, which increased arithmetically. The force of a rapidly growing population against a limited amount of land meant
diminishing returns to labor. The result, he claimed, was chronically low wages, which prevented the standard of living for most of the population from
rising above the subsistence level.
Malthus also questioned the automatic tendency of a market economy to produce full employment. He blamed unemployment upon the economy's tendency
to limit its spending by saving too much, a theme that lay forgotten until John Maynard Keynes revived it in the 1930s.
Coming at the end of the Classical tradition, John Stuart Mill parted company with the earlier classical economists on the inevitability of the distribution of
income produced by the market system. Mill pointed to a distinct difference between the market's two roles: allocation of resources and distribution of
income. The market might be efficient in allocating resources but not in distributing income, he wrote, making it necessary for society to intervene.
Value theory was important in classical theory. Smith wrote that the "real price of every thing ... is the toil and trouble of acquiring it" as influenced by its
scarcity. Smith maintained that, with rent and profit, other costs besides wages also enter the price of a commodity.[31] Other classical economists presented
variations on Smith, termed the 'labour theory of value'. Classical economics focused on the tendency of markets to move to long-run equilibrium.
A body of theory later termed 'neoclassical economics' or 'marginalism' formed from about 1870 to 1910. The term 'economics' was popularized by such
neoclassical economists as Alfred Marshall as a concise synonym for 'economic science' and a substitute for the earlier, broader term 'political
economy'.[34][35] This corresponded to the influence on the subject of mathematical methods used in the natural sciences.[2]
Neoclassical economics systematized supply and demand as joint determinants of price and quantity in market equilibrium, affecting both the allocation of
output and the distribution of income. It dispensed with the labour theory of value inherited from classical economics in favor of a marginal utility theory of
value on the demand side and a more general theory of costs on the supply side.[36]
In microeconomics, neoclassical economics represents incentives and costs as playing a pervasive role in shaping decision making. An immediate example
of this is the consumer theory of individual demand, which isolates how prices (as costs) and income affect quantity demanded. In macroeconomics it is
reflected in an early and lasting neoclassical synthesis with Keynesian macroeconomics.[37][38]
Neoclassical economics is occasionally referred as orthodox economics whether by its critics or sympathizers. Modern mainstream economics builds on
neoclassical economics but with many refinements that either supplement or generalize earlier analysis, such as econometrics, game theory, analysis of
market failure and imperfect competition, and the neoclassical model of economic growth for analyzing long-run variables affecting national income.
Other well-known schools or trends of thought referring to a particular style of economics practiced at and disseminated from well-defined groups of
academicians that have become known worldwide, include the Austrian School, the Freiburg School, the School of Lausanne, post-Keynesian economics
and the Stockholm school. Contemporary mainstream economics is sometimes separated into the Saltwater approach of those universities along the Eastern
and Western coasts of the US, and the Freshwater, or Chicago-school approach.
Within macroeconomics there is, in general order of their appearance in the literature; classical economics, Keynesian economics, the neoclassical
synthesis, post-Keynesian economics, monetarism, new classical economics, and supply-side economics. Alternative developments include ecological
economics, institutional economics, evolutionary economics, dependency theory, structuralist economics, world systems theory, econophysics, and
biophysical economics.[
In microeconomics, production is the conversion of inputs into outputs. It is an economic process that uses resources to create a commodity that is suitable
for exchange. This can include manufacturing, warehousing, shipping, and packaging. Some economists define production broadly as all economic activity
other than consumption. They see every commercial activity other than the final purchase as some form of production. Production is a process, and as such
it occurs through time and space. Because it is a flow concept, production is measured as a "rate of output per period of time".
There are three aspects to production processes, including the quantity of the commodity produced, the form of the good created and the temporal and
spatial distribution of the commodity produced. Opportunity cost expresses the idea that for every choice, the true economic cost is the next best
opportunity. Choices must be made between desirable yet mutually exclusive actions. It has been described as expressing "the basic relationship between
scarcity and choice.".[51] The notion of opportunity cost plays a crucial part in ensuring that scarce resources are used efficiently.[52] Thus, opportunity costs
are not restricted to monetary or financial costs: the real cost of output forgone, lost time, pleasure or any other benefit that provides utility should also be
considered.
The inputs or resources used in the production process are called factors of production. Possible inputs are typically grouped into six categories. These
factors are raw materials, machinery, labour services, capital goods, land, and enterprise. In the short-run, as opposed to the long-run, at least one of these
factors of production is fixed. Examples include major pieces of equipment, suitable factory space, and key personnel.
A variable factor of production is one whose usage rate can be changed easily. Examples include electrical power consumption, transportation services, and
most raw material inputs. In the "long-run", all of these factors of production can be adjusted by management. In the short run, a firm's "scale of operations"
determines the maximum number of outputs that can be produced, but in the long run, there are no scale limitations. Long-run and short-run changes play
an important part in economic models.
Economic efficiency describes how well a system generates the maximum desired output a with a given set of inputs and available technology. Efficiency is
improved if more output is generated without changing inputs, or in other words, the amount of "friction" or "waste" is reduced. Economists look for Pareto
efficiency, which is reached when a change cannot make someone better off without making someone else worse off.
Economic efficiency is used to refer to a number of related concepts. A system can be called economically efficient if: No one can be made better off without
making someone else worse off, more output cannot be obtained without increasing the amount of inputs, and production ensures the lowest possible per
unit cost. These definitions of efficiency are not exactly equivalent. However, they are all encompassed by the idea that nothing more can be achieved
given the resources available.
measure of barley, while the Babylonians and their city state neighbors later developed the earliest system of economics using a metric of various
commodities, that was fixed in a legal code.[12] The early law codes from Sumer could be considered the first (written) economic formula, and had many
attributes still in use in the current price system today... such as codified amounts of money for business deals (interest rates), fines in money for 'wrong
doing', inheritance rules, laws concerning how private property is to be taxed or divided, etc.[13][14] For a summary of the laws, see Babylonian law and
Ancient economic thought.
Economic thought dates from earlier Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, Indian, Chinese, Persian and Arab civilizations. Notable writers include Aristotle,
Chanakya (also known as Kautilya), Qin Shi Huang, Thomas Aquinas and Ibn Khaldun through to the 14th century. Joseph Schumpeter initially considered
the late scholastics of the 14th to 17th centuries as "coming nearer than any other group to being the 'founders' of scientific economics" as to monetary,
interest, and value theory within a natural-law perspective.[15] After discovering Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah, however, Schumpeter later viewed Ibn
Khaldun as being the closest forerunner of modern economics, [16] as many of his economic theories were not known in Europe until relatively modern
times.[17]
Nonetheless, recent research indicates that the Indian scholar-philosopher Chanakya (c. 340-293 BCE) predates Ibn Khaldun by a millennium and a half as
the forerunner of modern economics, [18][19][20][21] and has written more expansively on this subject, particularly on political economy. His magnum opus,
the Arthashastra (The Science of Wealth and Welfare), [22] is the genesis of economic concepts that include the opportunity cost, the demand-supply
framework, diminishing returns, marginal analysis, public goods, the distinction between the short run and the long run, asymmetric information and the
producer surplus.[23] In his capacity as an advisor to the throne of the Maurya Empire of ancient India, he has also advised on the sources and prerequisites
of economic growth, obstacles to it and on tax incentives to encourage economic growth.[24]
1638 painting of a French seaport during the heyday of mercantilismTwo other groups, later called 'mercantilists' and 'physiocrats', more directly influenced
the subsequent development of the subject. Both groups were associated with the rise of economic nationalism and modern capitalism in Europe.
Mercantilism was an economic doctrine that flourished from the 16th to 18th century in a prolific pamphlet literature, whether of merchants or statesmen. It
held that a nation's wealth depended on its accumulation of gold and silver. Nations without access to mines could obtain gold and silver from trade only by
selling goods abroad and restricting imports other than of gold and silver. The doctrine called for importing cheap raw materials to be used in
manufacturing goods, which could be exported, and for state regulation to impose protective tariffs on foreign manufactured goods and prohibit
manufacturing in the colonies.[25][26]
Physiocrats, a group of 18th century French thinkers and writers, developed the idea of the economy as a circular flow of income and output. Adam Smith
described their system "with all its imperfections" as "perhaps the purest approximation to the truth that has yet been published" on the subject. Physiocrats
believed that only agricultural production generated a clear surplus over cost, so that agriculture was the basis of all wealth.
Thus, they opposed the mercantilist policy of promoting manufacturing and trade at the expense of agriculture, including import tariffs. Physiocrats
advocated replacing administratively costly tax collections with a single tax on income of land owners. Variations on such a land tax were taken up by
subsequent economists (including Henry George a century later) as a relatively non-distortionary source of tax revenue. In reaction against copious
mercantilist trade regulations, the physiocrats advocated a policy of laissez-faire, which called for minimal government intervention in the economy.[27][28]
Thomas Robert Malthus used the idea of diminishing returns to explain low living standards. Population, he argued, tended to increase geometrically,
outstripping the production of food, which increased arithmetically. The force of a rapidly growing population against a limited amount of land meant
diminishing returns to labor. The result, he claimed, was chronically low wages, which prevented the standard of living for most of the population from
rising above the subsistence level.
Malthus also questioned the automatic tendency of a market economy to produce full employment. He blamed unemployment upon the economy's tendency
to limit its spending by saving too much, a theme that lay forgotten until John Maynard Keynes revived it in the 1930s.
Coming at the end of the Classical tradition, John Stuart Mill parted company with the earlier classical economists on the inevitability of the distribution of
income produced by the market system. Mill pointed to a distinct difference between the market's two roles: allocation of resources and distribution of
income. The market might be efficient in allocating resources but not in distributing income, he wrote, making it necessary for society to intervene.
Value theory was important in classical theory. Smith wrote that the "real price of every thing ... is the toil and trouble of acquiring it" as influenced by its
scarcity. Smith maintained that, with rent and profit, other costs besides wages also enter the price of a commodity.[31] Other classical economists presented
variations on Smith, termed the 'labour theory of value'. Classical economics focused on the tendency of markets to move to long-run equilibrium.
A body of theory later termed 'neoclassical economics' or 'marginalism' formed from about 1870 to 1910. The term 'economics' was popularized by such
neoclassical economists as Alfred Marshall as a concise synonym for 'economic science' and a substitute for the earlier, broader term 'political
economy'.[34][35] This corresponded to the influence on the subject of mathematical methods used in the natural sciences.[2]
Neoclassical economics systematized supply and demand as joint determinants of price and quantity in market equilibrium, affecting both the allocation of
output and the distribution of income. It dispensed with the labour theory of value inherited from classical economics in favor of a marginal utility theory of
value on the demand side and a more general theory of costs on the supply side.[36]
In microeconomics, neoclassical economics represents incentives and costs as playing a pervasive role in shaping decision making. An immediate example
of this is the consumer theory of individual demand, which isolates how prices (as costs) and income affect quantity demanded. In macroeconomics it is
reflected in an early and lasting neoclassical synthesis with Keynesian macroeconomics.[37][38]
Neoclassical economics is occasionally referred as orthodox economics whether by its critics or sympathizers. Modern mainstream economics builds on
neoclassical economics but with many refinements that either supplement or generalize earlier analysis, such as econometrics, game theory, analysis of
market failure and imperfect competition, and the neoclassical model of economic growth for analyzing long-run variables affecting national income.
Other well-known schools or trends of thought referring to a particular style of economics practiced at and disseminated from well-defined groups of
academicians that have become known worldwide, include the Austrian School, the Freiburg School, the School of Lausanne, post-Keynesian economics
and the Stockholm school. Contemporary mainstream economics is sometimes separated into the Saltwater approach of those universities along the Eastern
and Western coasts of the US, and the Freshwater, or Chicago-school approach.
Within macroeconomics there is, in general order of their appearance in the literature; classical economics, Keynesian economics, the neoclassical
synthesis, post-Keynesian economics, monetarism, new classical economics, and supply-side economics. Alternative developments include ecological
economics, institutional economics, evolutionary economics, dependency theory, structuralist economics, world systems theory, econophysics, and
biophysical economics.[
In microeconomics, production is the conversion of inputs into outputs. It is an economic process that uses resources to create a commodity that is suitable
for exchange. This can include manufacturing, warehousing, shipping, and packaging. Some economists define production broadly as all economic activity
other than consumption. They see every commercial activity other than the final purchase as some form of production. Production is a process, and as such
it occurs through time and space. Because it is a flow concept, production is measured as a "rate of output per period of time".
There are three aspects to production processes, including the quantity of the commodity produced, the form of the good created and the temporal and
spatial distribution of the commodity produced. Opportunity cost expresses the idea that for every choice, the true economic cost is the next best
opportunity. Choices must be made between desirable yet mutually exclusive actions. It has been described as expressing "the basic relationship between
scarcity and choice.".[51] The notion of opportunity cost plays a crucial part in ensuring that scarce resources are used efficiently.[52] Thus, opportunity costs
are not restricted to monetary or financial costs: the real cost of output forgone, lost time, pleasure or any other benefit that provides utility should also be
considered.
The inputs or resources used in the production process are called factors of production. Possible inputs are typically grouped into six categories. These
factors are raw materials, machinery, labour services, capital goods, land, and enterprise. In the short-run, as opposed to the long-run, at least one of these
factors of production is fixed. Examples include major pieces of equipment, suitable factory space, and key personnel.
A variable factor of production is one whose usage rate can be changed easily. Examples include electrical power consumption, transportation services, and
most raw material inputs. In the "long-run", all of these factors of production can be adjusted by management. In the short run, a firm's "scale of operations"
determines the maximum number of outputs that can be produced, but in the long run, there are no scale limitations. Long-run and short-run changes play
an important part in economic models.
Economic efficiency describes how well a system generates the maximum desired output a with a given set of inputs and available technology. Efficiency is
improved if more output is generated without changing inputs, or in other words, the amount of "friction" or "waste" is reduced. Economists look for Pareto
efficiency, which is reached when a change cannot make someone better off without making someone else worse off.
Economic efficiency is used to refer to a number of related concepts. A system can be called economically efficient if: No one can be made better off without
making someone else worse off, more output cannot be obtained without increasing the amount of inputs, and production ensures the lowest possible per
unit cost. These definitions of efficiency are not exactly equivalent. However, they are all encompassed by the idea that nothing more can be achieved
given the resources available.
measure of barley, while the Babylonians and their city state neighbors later developed the earliest system of economics using a metric of various
commodities, that was fixed in a legal code.[12] The early law codes from Sumer could be considered the first (written) economic formula, and had many
attributes still in use in the current price system today... such as codified amounts of money for business deals (interest rates), fines in money for 'wrong
doing', inheritance rules, laws concerning how private property is to be taxed or divided, etc.[13][14] For a summary of the laws, see Babylonian law and
Ancient economic thought.
Economic thought dates from earlier Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, Indian, Chinese, Persian and Arab civilizations. Notable writers include Aristotle,
Chanakya (also known as Kautilya), Qin Shi Huang, Thomas Aquinas and Ibn Khaldun through to the 14th century. Joseph Schumpeter initially considered
the late scholastics of the 14th to 17th centuries as "coming nearer than any other group to being the 'founders' of scientific economics" as to monetary,
interest, and value theory within a natural-law perspective.[15] After discovering Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah, however, Schumpeter later viewed Ibn
Khaldun as being the closest forerunner of modern economics, [16] as many of his economic theories were not known in Europe until relatively modern
times.[17]
Nonetheless, recent research indicates that the Indian scholar-philosopher Chanakya (c. 340-293 BCE) predates Ibn Khaldun by a millennium and a half as
the forerunner of modern economics, [18][19][20][21] and has written more expansively on this subject, particularly on political economy. His magnum opus,
the Arthashastra (The Science of Wealth and Welfare), [22] is the genesis of economic concepts that include the opportunity cost, the demand-supply
framework, diminishing returns, marginal analysis, public goods, the distinction between the short run and the long run, asymmetric information and the
producer surplus.[23] In his capacity as an advisor to the throne of the Maurya Empire of ancient India, he has also advised on the sources and prerequisites
of economic growth, obstacles to it and on tax incentives to encourage economic growth.[24]
1638 painting of a French seaport during the heyday of mercantilismTwo other groups, later called 'mercantilists' and 'physiocrats', more directly influenced
the subsequent development of the subject. Both groups were associated with the rise of economic nationalism and modern capitalism in Europe.
Mercantilism was an economic doctrine that flourished from the 16th to 18th century in a prolific pamphlet literature, whether of merchants or statesmen. It
held that a nation's wealth depended on its accumulation of gold and silver. Nations without access to mines could obtain gold and silver from trade only by
selling goods abroad and restricting imports other than of gold and silver. The doctrine called for importing cheap raw materials to be used in
manufacturing goods, which could be exported, and for state regulation to impose protective tariffs on foreign manufactured goods and prohibit
manufacturing in the colonies.[25][26]
Physiocrats, a group of 18th century French thinkers and writers, developed the idea of the economy as a circular flow of income and output. Adam Smith
described their system "with all its imperfections" as "perhaps the purest approximation to the truth that has yet been published" on the subject. Physiocrats
believed that only agricultural production generated a clear surplus over cost, so that agriculture was the basis of all wealth.
Thus, they opposed the mercantilist policy of promoting manufacturing and trade at the expense of agriculture, including import tariffs. Physiocrats
advocated replacing administratively costly tax collections with a single tax on income of land owners. Variations on such a land tax were taken up by
subsequent economists (including Henry George a century later) as a relatively non-distortionary source of tax revenue. In reaction against copious
mercantilist trade regulations, the physiocrats advocated a policy of laissez-faire, which called for minimal government intervention in the economy.[27][28]
Thomas Robert Malthus used the idea of diminishing returns to explain low living standards. Population, he argued, tended to increase geometrically,
outstripping the production of food, which increased arithmetically. The force of a rapidly growing population against a limited amount of land meant
diminishing returns to labor. The result, he claimed, was chronically low wages, which prevented the standard of living for most of the population from
rising above the subsistence level.
Malthus also questioned the automatic tendency of a market economy to produce full employment. He blamed unemployment upon the economy's tendency
to limit its spending by saving too much, a theme that lay forgotten until John Maynard Keynes revived it in the 1930s.
Coming at the end of the Classical tradition, John Stuart Mill parted company with the earlier classical economists on the inevitability of the distribution of
income produced by the market system. Mill pointed to a distinct difference between the market's two roles: allocation of resources and distribution of
income. The market might be efficient in allocating resources but not in distributing income, he wrote, making it necessary for society to intervene.
Value theory was important in classical theory. Smith wrote that the "real price of every thing ... is the toil and trouble of acquiring it" as influenced by its
scarcity. Smith maintained that, with rent and profit, other costs besides wages also enter the price of a commodity.[31] Other classical economists presented
variations on Smith, termed the 'labour theory of value'. Classical economics focused on the tendency of markets to move to long-run equilibrium.
A body of theory later termed 'neoclassical economics' or 'marginalism' formed from about 1870 to 1910. The term 'economics' was popularized by such
neoclassical economists as Alfred Marshall as a concise synonym for 'economic science' and a substitute for the earlier, broader term 'political
economy'.[34][35] This corresponded to the influence on the subject of mathematical methods used in the natural sciences.[2]
Neoclassical economics systematized supply and demand as joint determinants of price and quantity in market equilibrium, affecting both the allocation of
output and the distribution of income. It dispensed with the labour theory of value inherited from classical economics in favor of a marginal utility theory of
value on the demand side and a more general theory of costs on the supply side.[36]
In microeconomics, neoclassical economics represents incentives and costs as playing a pervasive role in shaping decision making. An immediate example
of this is the consumer theory of individual demand, which isolates how prices (as costs) and income affect quantity demanded. In macroeconomics it is
reflected in an early and lasting neoclassical synthesis with Keynesian macroeconomics.[37][38]
Neoclassical economics is occasionally referred as orthodox economics whether by its critics or sympathizers. Modern mainstream economics builds on
neoclassical economics but with many refinements that either supplement or generalize earlier analysis, such as econometrics, game theory, analysis of
market failure and imperfect competition, and the neoclassical model of economic growth for analyzing long-run variables affecting national income.
Other well-known schools or trends of thought referring to a particular style of economics practiced at and disseminated from well-defined groups of
academicians that have become known worldwide, include the Austrian School, the Freiburg School, the School of Lausanne, post-Keynesian economics
and the Stockholm school. Contemporary mainstream economics is sometimes separated into the Saltwater approach of those universities along the Eastern
and Western coasts of the US, and the Freshwater, or Chicago-school approach.
Within macroeconomics there is, in general order of their appearance in the literature; classical economics, Keynesian economics, the neoclassical
synthesis, post-Keynesian economics, monetarism, new classical economics, and supply-side economics. Alternative developments include ecological
economics, institutional economics, evolutionary economics, dependency theory, structuralist economics, world systems theory, econophysics, and
biophysical economics.[
In microeconomics, production is the conversion of inputs into outputs. It is an economic process that uses resources to create a commodity that is suitable
for exchange. This can include manufacturing, warehousing, shipping, and packaging. Some economists define production broadly as all economic activity
other than consumption. They see every commercial activity other than the final purchase as some form of production. Production is a process, and as such
it occurs through time and space. Because it is a flow concept, production is measured as a "rate of output per period of time".
There are three aspects to production processes, including the quantity of the commodity produced, the form of the good created and the temporal and
spatial distribution of the commodity produced. Opportunity cost expresses the idea that for every choice, the true economic cost is the next best
opportunity. Choices must be made between desirable yet mutually exclusive actions. It has been described as expressing "the basic relationship between
scarcity and choice.".[51] The notion of opportunity cost plays a crucial part in ensuring that scarce resources are used efficiently.[52] Thus, opportunity costs
are not restricted to monetary or financial costs: the real cost of output forgone, lost time, pleasure or any other benefit that provides utility should also be
considered.
The inputs or resources used in the production process are called factors of production. Possible inputs are typically grouped into six categories. These
factors are raw materials, machinery, labour services, capital goods, land, and enterprise. In the short-run, as opposed to the long-run, at least one of these
factors of production is fixed. Examples include major pieces of equipment, suitable factory space, and key personnel.
A variable factor of production is one whose usage rate can be changed easily. Examples include electrical power consumption, transportation services, and
most raw material inputs. In the "long-run", all of these factors of production can be adjusted by management. In the short run, a firm's "scale of operations"
determines the maximum number of outputs that can be produced, but in the long run, there are no scale limitations. Long-run and short-run changes play
an important part in economic models.
Economic efficiency describes how well a system generates the maximum desired output a with a given set of inputs and available technology. Efficiency is
improved if more output is generated without changing inputs, or in other words, the amount of "friction" or "waste" is reduced. Economists look for Pareto
efficiency, which is reached when a change cannot make someone better off without making someone else worse off.
Economic efficiency is used to refer to a number of related concepts. A system can be called economically efficient if: No one can be made better off without
making someone else worse off, more output cannot be obtained without increasing the amount of inputs, and production ensures the lowest possible per
unit cost. These definitions of efficiency are not exactly equivalent. However, they are all encompassed by the idea that nothing more can be achieved given the resources available.