Money is a critical component of any modern economy, serving as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. It is used by individuals, businesses, and governments to facilitate transactions and to manage financial resources. In this essay, we will explore the functions of money, and how it helps to facilitate economic activity. Medium of Exchange: One of the most important functions of money is its role as a medium of exchange. In a barter system, goods and services are exchanged directly for other goods and services, with no universal medium of exchange. However, money provides a convenient and efficient way to facilitate transactions by allowing buyers and sellers to exchange goods and services for a universally accepted form of payment. This reduces the need for a double coincidence of wants, where a buyer must have something the seller wants in order to complete a Continue reading
Economics Basics
Incremental Principle in Economics
The incremental concept is closely related to the marginal costs and marginal revenues of economic theory. Incremental concept in managerial economics involves two important activities which are as follows: Estimating the impact of decision alternatives on costs and revenues. Emphasizing the changes in total cost and total cost and total revenue resulting from changes in prices, products, procedures, investments or whatever may be at stake in the decision. The two basic components of incremental reasoning are as follows: Incremental cost: Incremental cost may be defined as the change in total cost resulting from a particular decision. Incremental revenue: Incremental revenue means the change in total revenue resulting from a particular decision. The incremental principle in economics may be stated as under: A decision is obviously a profitable one if; It increases revenue more than costs It reduces costs more that revenues. It decreases some costs to a greater extent than Continue reading
Variants of Perfect Competition Market Structure
In the previous article, we learned about perfect competition and its features. There are some derivatives of perfect competition. The most important variants of perfect competition market structure are: 1. Effective or Workable Competition Competition among the sellers, even though it may not be perfect, can be regarded as effective if it offers real alternatives to consumers that are sufficient to compel sellers to vary quality, service and price substantially with a view to attract buyers. The prerequisites of effective competition are as follows: Ready substitution of one product for another. General availability of essential information about alternatives (its significance lies in that buyers cannot influence the behavior of the sellers unless alternatives are known.) Presence of several sellers, each of them possessing the capacity to survive and grow. Preservation of conditions which keep alive the basis or potential competition from others. Substantial independence of action that is each seller Continue reading
Interest Rate Concepts
In market economy, there are many economic-financial categories, including credit and credit interest rate which are two of the most important ones. Credit activities are borrowing and lending activities. The capital-using relationship between borrowers and lenders bases on the principles of reimbursement. Lenders who are in excess of capital have opportunities not only to preserve but also capital get profit. Borrowers who are short of capital have chances to get additional capital to meet production, business or living needs. Therefore, owing to the credit activities that a large proportion of capital in the economy are mobilized, concentrated and distributed from temporary capital surplus sections to shortage ones to meet different needs of all entities in the economy. Indispensable leverage and tool in credit activities is interest rate. Interest rate of bank credit is the ratio in percentage between income and amount of loan for a certain period. Thus, interest rate Continue reading
Approaches to Demand Forecasting in Managerial Economics
All firms forecast demand, but it would be difficult to find any two firms that forecast demand in exactly the same way. Over the last few decades, many different forecasting techniques have been developed in a number of different application areas, including engineering and economics. Many such procedures have been applied to the practical problem of forecasting demand in a business system, with varying degrees of success. Most commercial software packages that support demand forecasting in a business system include dozens of different forecasting algorithms that the analyst can use to generate alternative demand forecasts. While scores of different forecasting techniques exist, almost any forecasting procedure can be broadly classified into one of the following four basic categories based on the fundamental approach towards the forecasting problem that is employed by the technique. Judgmental Approaches. The essence of the judgmental approach is to address the forecasting issue by assuming that Continue reading
Demand Forecasting in Managerial Economics
One of the crucial aspects in which managerial economics differs from pure economic theory lies in the treatment of risk and uncertainty. Traditional economic theory assumes a risk-free world of certainty; but the real world business is full of all sorts of risk and uncertainty. A manager cannot, therefore, afford to ignore risk and uncertainty. The element of risk is associated with future which is indefinite and uncertain. To cope with future risk and uncertainty, the manager needs to predict the future event. The likely future event has to be given form and content in terms of projected course of variables, i.e. forecasting. Thus, business forecasting is an essential ingredient of corporate planning. Such forecasting enables the manager to minimize the element of risk and uncertainty. Demand forecasting is a specific type of business forecasting. Concepts of Demand Forecasting The manager can conceptualize the future in definite terms. If he Continue reading