Glossary for business English

GDP: The total market value of all goods and services produced within the political boundaries of an economy during a given period of time, usually a year.

GNP: The total market value of all the goods and services produced by a nation during a given time, usually a year.

Real GDP: The production of goods and services valued at current price.

Nominal GDP: The production of goods and services valued at constant price.

Economic growth: The process in which a steady long-time growth in real GDP and an improvement in living standards are achieved.

GDP gap: The amount by which actual GDP falls short of potential GDP.

Recession: A period of declining real incomes and rising unemployment.

Depression: A severe recession. A period of drastic decline in a national or international economy, characterized by decreasing business activity, falling prices, and unemployment.

Value added: It can be defines as the gross value of an industry’s output minus the value of its inputs from other industries.

Okun’s Law: In economics, Okun's Law, named after economist Arthur Okun, describes a relationship between the change in the rate of unemployment and the difference between actual and potential real GDP. It can be stated as saying that for every one percentage point by which the actual unemployment rate exceeds the "natural" rate of unemployment, there is a 2 to 4 percent "GDP Gap.

Indexing: It is a mechanism by which wages, prices, and contracts are partially or wholly compensated for changes in the general price level.

Phillip’s curve: A curve that shows that short-run trade-off between inflation and unemployment.

Potential GDP: A situation in which all the economy’s labour, capital, land and entrepreneurial ability are fully employed.

Equilibrium: A situation in which the price has reached the level where quantity supplied equals quantity demanded.

Stagflation: A situation in which an economy is experiencing both falling output and rising prices.

MPC: It is the extra amount that people consume when they receive an extra dollar of disposable income.

MPS: It can be defined as the fraction of an extra dollar of disposable income that goes to extra saving.

M1: Transactions money or narrow money consists of items that are actually used for transaction.

M2: Broad money or near money, includes M1 plus saving accounts in banks and similar assets that are very close substitutes for transaction money.

Theory of liquidity preference: Keynes’s theory that the interests rate adjusts to bring money supply and money demand into balance.

Supply shock: An event that directly alters firm’s costs and prices, shifting the economy’s aggregate-supply curve and thus the Phillip’s curve.

Crowding effect: The offset in aggregate demand that results when expansionary fiscal policy raises the interest rate and thereby reduces investment spending.

Multiplier effect: The additional shifts in aggregate demand that results when

expansionary fiscal policy increases income and thereby increases consumer spending.

Fraction-reserve banking:(银行部分准备金制度) A banking system in which banks holds only a fraction of deposits as reserve.

Money multiplier: The amount of money that banking system generates with each dollar of reserve.

Open-market operations: The purchase and sale of US government bonds by the Fed.

Reserve requirements: Regulation on the minimum amount of reserves that banks must hold against deposits.

The Laffer curve: A curve which supposes that for a given economy there is an optimal income tax level to maximize tax revenues. It shows that tax revenue rises first with the size of the tax; but then. As the tax gets larger, the market shrinks so much that tax revenue starts to fall.

Trade deficit: The amount by which a nation’s imports of goods exceeds its exports of goods.

Trade surplus: The amount by which a nation’s exports of goods exceeds it imports of goods.

Balance of trade: The value of a country’s exports minus the value of its imports.

Absolute Advantage: The ability of a country to supply a particular product or class of goods at lower costs than competing nations.

Comparative advantage: The ability to produce a good at lower cost, relative to other goods, compared to another country.

Demand or reactive lag: It is the time it takes for consumers to respond to the emergence of new, low cost of the product.

International Product life cycle: Certain kinds of products go through a continuum, or cycle, that consists of roughly four stages-introduction, growth, maturity, and decline- and that the location of production will shift from one country to another depending on the stage in the products life cycle.

Mercantilism :

Non-tariff barriers: All barriers other then protective tariff that nations erect to impede international trade, including import quotas, licensing requirements and so on.

MES(minimum efficient scale): The lowest level of output at which a form can minimize lone-run average total cost.

Ad valorem tariff:

Import quotas: Government put a physical limit on the volume of a particular production which may be imported during a particular period of time.

Voluntary export restraints: restraints on exports that are self-imposed by an exporting country, although often in response to a threat that if such constraints are not imposed, the importing country will impose import quotes

Anti-dumping duties: special import duties imposed when a firm, following an enquiry, is assessed as having sold a product in the importing market at a price below the one it charges in the home market.

Countervailing duties: Additional duties imposed by the importing country to offset government subsidies in the exporting country, when the subsidized imports cause material injury to domestic industry in the importing country

Externalities: Spillover benefits or costs arising from an economic activity that are not taken into account by producers, resulting in levels of production that are inappropriate from the standpoint of the economy as a whole.

Fundamental disequilibrium: A balance of payments surplus or deficits too great and/or enduring to be financed. It is easy to detect with hindsight, but difficult to detect at the onset

X-inefficiency: The failure to produce any specific output at the lowest average (and total) cost possible.

Capital stock: The total available capital in a nation.

Free rider: The inability of potential providers of an economically desirable but in divisive good or service to obtain payment from those who benefit because the exclusive principle is not applicable.

Primary product: A good that has not been processed and is therefore in its natural state, specifically products of agriculture, forestry, fishing, and mining.

Intermediate goods: Products that are purchased for resale or further processing or manufacture.

Local content requirement: A requirement that some specific fraction of a good be produced domestically.

Transfer of technology: the movement of a technology from its culture of origin to some different culture.

Adverse selection problem: A problem is arising when information known to one party to a contract is not to known to the other party, causing the latter to incur major costs. E.g.: Individuals who have the poorest health are most likely to buy health insurance.

Balance of payments: A summary of all the transactions that took place between the individuals, firms, and governments units of one nation and those of all other nation during a year.

Current account: The section in a nation’s international balance of payments that records its exports and imports of goods and services, its net investment income, and its net transfer.

Capital account: The section in a nation’s international balance of payments that records the capital inflows and the capital outflows of that nation.

Double entry accounting: A method of bookkeeping in which every entry is balanced by another entry. Correct double-entry accounting always provides a balanced set of books; that is, the total value of your asset accounts minus the total of your liability accounts will equal the total of your equity accounts.

Unilateral transfer: Payment made by the government or private sector of one country to another as a gift or aid, not as payment for any good or service nor as an obligation.

Private transfer payments: It refers to gifts made by individual’s and non-government institutions to foreign.

Government transfers refer to gifts or grants made by one government to foreign residents or foreign governments.

Special Drawing Rights:

Hot money: Money that moves rapidly across country borders in quick profits on debt or equities investments.

Par value: Face value. The central value of a pegged exchange rate, around which the actual rate is permitted to fluctuate within set bounds.

Crawling pegs: The currency is adjusted periodically in small amounts at a fixed rate or in response to changes in selective quantitative indicators, such as past inflation differentials vis-à-vis major trading partners, differentials between the inflation target and expected inflation in major trading partners, and so forth.

Key currency: It is one that is traded on world money markets, has demonstrated stable values over time and has been widely accepted as a means of international settlement.

Hedging:

Basket of currencies: A group of currencies used to establish a value for some other currency.

Net capital inflows: It means the purchase of foreign assets by domestic residents is less than the purchase of domestic assets by foreign residents.

Net capital outflows: It means the purchase of foreign assets by domestic residents is more than the purchase of domestic assets by foreign residents.

International monetary system: Or international monetary order or regime refers to the rules, customs, instruments, facilities, and organizations for effecting international payments.

Pegged exchange rate :

Specie flow mechanism: Under the gold standard, the mechanism by which international payments would adjust. A country with high inflation would export less, import more, and thus lose specie, i.e., gold. With the money supply fixed to the quantity of gold, the resulting monetary contraction would reduce prices. Due to David Hume. 

Gold Standard: A monetary system in which both the value of a unit of the currency and the quantity of it in circulation are specified in terms of gold. If two currencies are both on the gold standard, then the exchange rate between them is approximately determined by their two prices in terms of gold.

Beggar thy neighbor: 

Cartel: A group of firms that seeks to raise the price of a good by restricting its supply. The term is usually used for international groups, especially involving state-owned firms and/or governments.

Stand-by-arrangements:（备用信贷协议） It refers to advance permission for future borrowing by the nation in IMF.

Seignior age:（铸币利差）It is the profit accruing to a nation form issuing the currency or which its currency is used as an international currency.

Maastricht Treaty:

Globalization: The increasing worldwide integration of markets for goods, services, and capital that attracted special attention in the late 1990s.

Strategic alliances: are business alliances among companies that provide strategic benefits to the partners.

Privatization: The conversion of a government-owned enterprise to private ownership.

Derivative market: A derivatives market is any market for a derivative security, that is a contract which specifies the right or obligation to receive or deliver future cash flows based on some future event such as the price of an independent security or the performance of an index.

 Engel’s laws:

Entrepreneurs: The agents that put science into application and thus change it into technologies or the people into business practices.

Technology diffusion: It is the dissemination of technical information and knowledge and the subsequent adoption of new technologies and techniques by users. Technology diffusion is a component in the broader innovation process.

Entry barrier: A natural or artificial impediment to a firm beginning to operate in an industry. Entry barriers give a first mover advantage to firms already in an industry, and these are often national firms in competition with potential foreign entrants.

Corporate strategy: strategic planning or management decisions that effect the direction or performance of company.

Value chain: An organization's set of linked, value-creating activities, ranging from securing basic raw materials and energy to the ultimate delivery of products and services.

Expropriation: The confiscation of private property by the State, with or without compensation or consent.

Legal recourse:

Differentiation.: A key element in firms' competitive advantage. Refers to market conditions in which a product can vary in some significant way from firm to firm producing it, and purchasers demonstrate preferences about which supplier to patronize in terms of these non-price differences. Factors contributing to product differentiation include quality and performance variations, special service conditions, and advertising.

Severance pay: It is an entitlement that may be payable to an employee of the Public Service upon termination of employment.

Extraterritoriality: Extraterritoriality is the state of being exempt from the jurisdiction of local law, usually as the result of diplomatic negotiations. For instance, a citizen of country A may enjoy extraterritoriality while visiting country B. In that case, this person cannot legally be tried by the courts of country B for some alleged crime. Extraterritoriality can also be applied to physical places, such as embassies, consulates, or military bases of foreign countries.

Anti-trust: Government regulation intended to maintain competitive market structures, in order to protect trade and commerce from monopolies and restraints on competition such as collusive price-fixing and vertical restraints.

Transfer price: Prices that one subsidiary of a firm pays for goods purchases from a second subsidiary.

Nationalization: A process in which ownership of resources are transferred from the private to public sectors.

Intellectual property right: The right to control and derive the benefits from something one has invented, discovered, or created.

Forum shopping: It is the informal name given to the practice of attempting to get a case heard in the court thought most likely to provide a decision favorable to a plaintiff.

Principle of comity: It provides that a country will honor and enforce within its own territory the judgments and decisions of foreign courts with certain limitations.

First to file system: The first to file policy is a world-wide mainstream patent law doctrine used by nearly the whole world save the United States and the Philippines. Based on this policy, even if inventor A made the invention earlier than inventor B, if B filed the patent application to the patent office earlier, B shall be awarded a patent.

Merger and acquisition: Combining of two or more entities through the direct acquisition by one of the net assets of the other.

Consumer market: An organization group of buyers and sellers of a particular product that are affected by its demand and supply.

Distribution channel: All the organizations and people involved in the physical movement of goods and services from producers to consumers.

Listed company: A company whose share have been quoted by the stock exchange.

Industrial complex: A manufacturing area that consist of many different factories turning out different products.

Brand recognition: A product that has been recognized by local consumers.

Quota: A restriction on the quantity of imports of a particular lines of products.

Organizational culture: The common values, behavior patterns, institutions, and so on among employees of corporation.

Market economy: An economy in which the market is used to determine resource allocation, prices, and investments.

New economy: A different form of economy that is mainly supported by information technology sector instead of manufacturing.

Bubble economy: An economy that primarily depends on banking, financial markets and other transient operations.

Venture capital: Funds that are invested in new plants or other enterprises open to rather large risk of loss.

Business cycle: A period of time during which business moves form high activity through a running-down period to a state of low activity and then gradually improves and booms again.

Deregulation: The ending of the existing system of regulations, especially by the government.

Public offering: A non-exclusive issue to the general public either bonds or stock by a firm in order to raise funds.

Bottleneck: Difficulties or things those are more likely to hinder normal production or prevent smooth economic development.

Information technology: All devices and knowledge that required to managed and kind of data.

Treasury bill: A U.S government short-term security sold to the public each week.

Capital stock: The entire shares of a joint-stock company whose shareholders together from the ownership of the concern..

Product life cycle: A theory states that certain kinds of products go through a cycle consisting of four stages(introduction, growth, maturity  and declines.

Junk bonds: An interest-bearing certificate of debts that gives a higher yield but is issued by a company with low credit rating.

Liquidity: Available cash or the capacity to obtain it on demand.

Multinational company: A very large organization that owns companies in more than one country in order to obtain cheap raw materials and make efficient use of a local workforce.

Benchmark: A standard by which something can be measured or judged.

Pricing policy: A plan or statement of prices set by an organization for its products and services.

Money market: The institutions and practices through which short-term funds are channeled to borrowers and entrepreneurs.

Capital market: A place where deals are made relating to long-term investment needed by business and pubic authorities.

Collateral: Property or an item of value that can be claimed by a person, bank or other organizations if a loan is not repaid.

Dow-Jones industrial Average: An index of share prices quoted on the New York Stock Exchange for a group of 30 leading industrial companies

Blue chip: A stock that sells at a high price because of public confidence in its long record of steady earning.

Social security: A government program that provides economic assistance to persons faced with unemployment, disability, or agedness, financed by assessment of employers and employees.

Reinsurance: The purchase of insurance by an insurance company form another insurance company (reinsurer) to provide it protection against large losses on cases it has already insured.

Sanction: The penalty for noncompliance specified in a law or decree.

Speculation: Engagement in risky business transactions on the chance of quick or considerable profit.

Value added tax: An indirect tax imposed on consumption that is reflective of the incremental increases on the value of goods through the chain of production, from the raw material phase to final consumption.

Fair trade: Trade that conforms to a fair-trade agreement.

Subsidy: A financial benefit, direct or direct, provided through financial contribution, policy measures or practices of a Government or any public body to producers or processors.

Rebate: A deduction from an amount to be paid or a return of part of an amount given in payment.

Trade liberalization: Reduction of tariffs and removal or relaxation of national trade barriers.

Trade barrier: Any barrier that may impede the import of goods, such as testing or certification.

Waiver: Permission granted by WTO members allowing a WTO member not to comply with normal commitments. Waivers have time limits and extensions have to be justified.

Arbitration: The process by which the parties to a dispute submit their differences to the judgment of an impartial person or group appointed by mutual consent or statutory provision.

Dispute Settlement:Those institutional provisions in a trade agreement which provide the means for settling differences of view between the parties.

Copyright: The legal right granted to an author, a composed, a playwright, a publisher, or a distributor to exclusive publication, production, sale, or distribution of a literary, musical, dramatic, or artistic work.

Trade sanction: Use of a trade policy as a sanction, most commonly an embargo imposed against a country for violating human right.

Trade reciprocity: The practice by which government extend similar concessions to each other, as when one government lowers its tariffs or other barriers impeding its imports in exchange for equivalent concessions from a trading partner on barriers affecting its exports.

Appellate Body: An independent body that , upon request by one or more parties to the dispute, reviews findings in panel reports.

Balance sheet: A financial statement that reports the assets and equities of a company at a particular time.

Re-capitalization: The act or process of changing the capital structure of a company.

Cash flow: The cash receipts or net income from one or more assets for a given period, reckoned after taxes and other disbursements, and often used as a measure of corporate worth.

Labor-intensive: Requiring or having a large expenditure of labor in comparison to capital.

The chain of command: A system whereby authority passes down from the top through a series of executive positions or military ranks in which each is accountable to the one directly superior.

Productivity: The rate at which goods or services are produces, especially output per unit of labor.

Marker share: The proportion of total sales volumes of a certain market that a company captures.

Intellectual capital: Assets or capital in the form of knowledge, patent or technology.

Emerging markets: Markets which are newly formed or have just come into prominence.

Portfolio investment: Investment in securities such as bonds and stocks with the aim to earn interest and dividends rather than participate in the management of companies.

Direct investment: Investment made in a firm which attempts to exercises control over the management of the firm.

Electronic commerce: Maintaining business relationships and selling information, service, and commodities by means of computer telecommunications networks.

Bond: A certificate of debt issued by a government or corporate guaranteeing payment of the original investment plus interest by a specified future date.

Equity: Common stock and preferred stock which represent ownership to a business organization.

Just-in-time: It is a management philosophy that strives to eliminate sources of manufacturing waste by producing the right part in the right place at the right time.

Stock turnover: The number of times a particular stock of goods is sold and restored during a given period of time.

Outsource: To farm out(work, for example) to an outside provider or manufacture in order to cut costs.

Supply chain: A number of business establishments through which products are moved from producers to end-users.

Lead time: The period of time between the actual ordering of parts or equipment and the delivery of them.

Investment banker: Companies that help other companies raise capital through the sale of new stock and bonds.

Initial public offering: Private company’s first offer of stock to the public.

Second market: Where securities are trade after their initial issuance.

Spending sprees: Overindulgence in spending

Liquidity squeeze: Financial pressure caused by shortage or narrowing economic margins.

Mutual fund: An investment company that continually offers new shares and buys existing shares back on demand and uses its capital to invest in diversified securities of other companies.

Money market: The trade in short-term, low-risk securities. Such as certificates of deposits an U.S Treasury notes.

Bull market: A market, especially securities market, which is going up or expected to go up.

Liquidity: The quality of being readily convertible into cash..

Hedge fund: An investment company that uses high-risk techniques, such as borrowing money and selling short, in an effort to make extraordinary capital gains.

Up market: Appealing to or designed for high-income consumers.

Personal disposable income: Personal income less personal direct taxes and other current transfers from persons to government.

Zero-sum game: Zero-sum describes a situation in which a participant's gain (or loss) is exactly balanced by the losses (or gains) of the other participant(s). It is so named because when you add up the total gains of the participants and subtract the total losses then they will sum to zero.

Floating exchange rate system: A system in which a rate whose value is determined purely by the market forces of supply and demand with no direct intervention of the central bank (Also referred to as a flexible exchange rate.).

Concessional Sale: A sale on terms that is more generous than normal commercial conditions would otherwise dictate. Such terms may include reduced sales prices, special low-interest financing or extended payment terms, or acceptance of a "soft" currency in settlement of the transaction. Concessional sales are often made in conjunction with foreign aid programs, but they may also be an aspect of governmental or corporate competitive policies and practices.

Cross-licensing: An arrangement in which a firm grants a license to another firm to exploit proprietary rights in its patents, trademarks, or trade secrets, in exchange for similar licensure to use intellectual property rights of the recipient firm.

Cross-subsidization: The use of financial resources accumulated by a multinational f1rn1 in one part of the world to fight a competitive battle in another region or country .See globalization.