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Microeconomics is a branch of mainstream economics that studies the behavior of individuals and firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources and the interactions among these individuals and firms. Microeconomics focuses on the study of individual markets, sectors, or industries as opposed to the national economy as whole, which is studied in macroeconomics.
Pareto efficiency or Pareto optimality is a situation where no individual or preference criterion can be made better off without making at least one individual or preference criterion worse off. The concept is named after Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), Italian civil engineer and economist, who used the concept in his studies of economic efficiency and income distribution. The following three concepts are closely related:
In economics, deadweight loss is the difference in production and consumption of any given product or service including government tax. The presence of deadweight loss is most commontly identified when the quantity produced relative to the amount consumed differs in regards to the optimal concentration of surplus. This difference in the amount reflects the quantity that is not being utilized or consumed and thus resulting in a loss. This "deadweight loss" is therefore attributed to both, producers and consumers because neither one of them benefits from the surplus of the overall production.
In economics, an externality or external cost is an indirect cost or benefit to an uninvolved third party that arises as an effect of another party's activity. Externalities can be considered as unpriced goods involved in either consumer or producer market transactions. Air pollution from motor vehicles is one example. The cost of air pollution to society is not paid by either the producers or users of motorized transport to the rest of society. Water pollution from mills and factories is another example. All consumers are all made worse off by pollution but are not compensated by the market for this damage. A positive externality is when an individual's consumption in a market increases the well-being of others, but the individual does not charge the third party for the benefit. The third party is essentially getting a free product. An example of this might be the apartment above a bakery receiving the benefit of enjoyment from smelling fresh pastries every morning. The people who live in the apartment do not compensate the bakery for this benefit.
This aims to be a complete article list of economics topics:
In microeconomics, economic efficiency, depending on the context, is usually one of the following two related concepts:
A Pigovian tax is a tax on any market activity that generates negative externalities. The tax is normally set by the government to correct an undesirable or inefficient market outcome, and does so by being set equal to the external marginal cost of the negative externalities. In the presence of negative externalities, social cost includes private cost and external cost caused by negative externalities. This means the social cost of a market activity is not covered by the private cost of the activity. In such a case, the market outcome is not efficient and may lead to over-consumption of the product. Often-cited examples of negative externalities are environmental pollution and increased public healthcare costs associated with tobacco and sugary drink consumption.
Welfare economics is a branch of economics that uses microeconomic techniques to evaluate well-being (welfare) at the aggregate (economy-wide) level.
Government failure, in the context of public economics, is an economic inefficiency caused by a government intervention, if the inefficiency would not exist in a true free market. The costs of the government intervention are greater than the benefits provided. It can be viewed in contrast to a market failure, which is an economic inefficiency that results from the free market itself, and can potentially be corrected through government regulation. However, Government failure often arises from an attempt to solve market failure. The idea of government failure is associated with the policy argument that, even if particular markets may not meet the standard conditions of perfect competition required to ensure social optimality, government intervention may make matters worse rather than better.
In economics, tax incidence or tax burden is the effect of a particular tax on the distribution of economic welfare. Economists distinguish between the entities who ultimately bear the tax burden and those on whom tax is initially imposed. The tax burden measures the true economic weight of the tax, measured by the difference between real incomes or utilities before and after imposing the tax, taking into account how the tax leads prices to change. If a 10% tax is imposed on sellers of butter, for example, but the market price rises 8% as a result, most of the burden is on buyers, not sellers. The concept of tax incidence was initially brought to economists' attention by the French Physiocrats, in particular François Quesnay, who argued that the incidence of all taxation falls ultimately on landowners and is at the expense of land rent. Tax incidence is said to "fall" upon the group that ultimately bears the burden of, or ultimately suffers a loss from, the tax. The key concept of tax incidence is that the tax incidence or tax burden does not depend on where the revenue is collected, but on the price elasticity of demand and price elasticity of supply. As a general policy matter, the tax incidence should not violate the principles of a desirable tax system, especially fairness and transparency. The concept of tax incidence is used in political science and sociology to analyze the level of resources extracted from each income social stratum in order to describe how the tax burden is distributed among social classes. That allows one to derive some inferences about the progressive nature of the tax system, according to principles of vertical equity.
In economics, the excess burden of taxation, also known as the deadweight cost or deadweight loss of taxation, is one of the economic losses that society suffers as the result of taxes or subsidies. Economic theory posits that distortions change the amount and type of economic behavior from that which would occur in a free market without the tax. Excess burdens can be measured using the average cost of funds or the marginal cost of funds (MCF). Excess burdens were first discussed by Adam Smith.
Optimal tax theory or the theory of optimal taxation is the study of designing and implementing a tax that maximises a social welfare function subject to economic constraints. The social welfare function used is typically a function of individuals' utilities, most commonly some form of utilitarian function, so the tax system is chosen to maximise the aggregate of individual utilities. Tax revenue is required to fund the provision of public goods and other government services, as well as for redistribution from rich to poor individuals. However, most taxes distort individual behavior, because the activity that is taxed becomes relatively less desirable; for instance, taxes on labour income reduce the incentive to work. The optimization problem involves minimizing the distortions caused by taxation, while achieving desired levels of redistribution and revenue. Some taxes are thought to be less distorting, such as lump-sum taxes and Pigouvian taxes, where the market consumption of a good is inefficient, and a tax brings consumption closer to the efficient level.
In economics, distribution is the way total output, income, or wealth is distributed among individuals or among the factors of production. In general theory and in for example the U.S. National Income and Product Accounts, each unit of output corresponds to a unit of income. One use of national accounts is for classifying factor incomes and measuring their respective shares, as in national Income. But, where focus is on income of persons or households, adjustments to the national accounts or other data sources are frequently used. Here, interest is often on the fraction of income going to the top x percent of households, the next x percent, and so forth, and on the factors that might affect them.
Justice in economics is a subcategory of welfare economics. It is a "set of moral and ethical principles for building economic institutions". Economic justice aims to create opportunities for every person to have a dignified, productive and creative life that extends beyond simple economics.
In economics, gains from trade are the net benefits to economic agents from being allowed an increase in voluntary trading with each other. In technical terms, they are the increase of consumer surplus plus producer surplus from lower tariffs or otherwise liberalizing trade.
A lump-sum tax is a special way of taxation, based on a fixed amount, rather than on the real circumstance of the taxed entity. In this, the entity cannot do anything to change their liability.
Public economics is the study of government policy through the lens of economic efficiency and equity. Public economics builds on the theory of welfare economics and is ultimately used as a tool to improve social welfare.
Optimal capital income taxation is a subarea of optimal tax theory which studies the design of taxes on capital income such that a given economic criterion like utility is optimized.
This glossary of economics is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in economics, its sub-disciplines, and related fields.
Optimal labour income tax is a sub-area of optimal tax theory which refers to the study of designing a tax on individual labour income such that a given economic criterion like social welfare is optimized.
References
- ↑ Alan Deardorff. "Distortion", Deardorff's Glossary of International Economics.
- ↑ Stephen D. Williamson (2010). "Sources of Social Inefficiencies," Macroeconomics, 3rd Edition.
- ↑ Agnar Sandmo (2008). "Pigouvian taxes." The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics , 2nd Edition. Abstract.
- ↑ •Louis Kaplow (2008). "optimal taxation," The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd Edition. Abstract.
• Louis Kaplow (2008). "income taxation and optimal policies," The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd Edition. Abstract.
• Alan J. Auerbach (2008). "taxation of corporate profits," The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd Edition. Abstract. - ↑ S. Rao Aiyagari, R. Anton Braun, Zvi Eckstein (1998). "Transaction Services, Inflation, and Welfare," Journal of Political Economy, 106(6), pp. 1274-1301 Archived May 21, 2005, at the Wayback Machine (press +).
- ↑ • T. N. Srinivasan (1987). "distortions," The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics , v. 1, pp. 865-67.
• Joel Slemrod (1990). "Optimal Taxation and Optimal Tax Systems," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 4(1), p p. 157-178.
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