30 terms were found starting with the letter s.
- Scenario
- A story about the future told with numbers and words. Scenarios are not predictions or forecasts of what will happen. Rather, they suggest what might happen.
- Second Best
- A situation in which a Pareto optimum is not attainable due to constraints on what firms, households, or the government can do.
- Seigniorage
- The difference between the face value of money and the cost of printing or minting the money. Seigniorage represents a benefit to the government that comes from its authority to create money.
- Settled Agriculture
- A type of farming system in which land is used continuously (subject to occasional years where fields are left fallow) in crop and/or livestock production.
- Shadow Price
- A “price” used in economic analysis to represent a cost or benefit from a good when the market price is a poor indicator of economic value or there is no market at all for that good.
- Shifting Cultivation
- A type of farming system in which a parcel of agricultural land is cultivated until its productivity has been depleted, after which a new parcel is cultivated. The original parcel is in many cases cultivated again after its productivity has been restored.
- Short Run
- A time horizon over which at least one input into production is fixed.
- Slash-and-Burn Agriculture
- The practice of cutting and burning a forested area to make way for agriculture, and then moving to another forested area after the previous area’s agricultural productivity has been depleted. Historically, forests were permitted to regrow on the depleted land, after which the land was often cut and burned again. Is a type of shifting cultivation.
- Small Country
- In economics, a country that is so small economically that its international transactions do not have a significant impact on world prices. A small country is essentially a price taker in world markets.
- Social Benefit
- The benefit of an activity to society at large, taking into account not only the benefit to the individual, household, firm or government undertaking the activity but also the benefits to all other members of society.
- Social Capital
- The value of social networks that people can draw on to solve common problems. The benefits of social capital flow from the trust, reciprocity, information, and cooperation associated with social networks.
- Social Cost
- The cost of an activity to society at large, taking into account not only the cost to the individual, household, firm or government undertaking the activity but also the costs to all other members of society.
- Social Rate of Time Preference (SRTP)
- A rate for discounting future benefits and costs that is based on comparisons of utility across different points in time or different generations. It consists of two components: (1) a component to reflect the fact that people tend to discount future benefits and costs, whether to themselves or to their children; and (2) a component to adjust for differences over time in living standards.
- South
- Another name for the low-income countries and middle-income countries as a group.
- Special and Differential Treatment
- A trade provision allowing exports from developing countries to receive preferential access to developed-country markets.
- Specific Rate Tariff
- A charge levied on imports defined in terms of a specific money amount per unit.
- Spillover
- A special type of beneficial externality. A spillover occurs when one person’s investments in human capital increase the productivity of other people. Some types of spillovers also increase the rate of return to investments by others in their own human capital.
- Stabilization Policies
- In a developing country context, measures recommended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to restore stability to a country’s finances. These measures typically involve a combination of spending cuts and tax increases.
- Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) Codes
- A classification system developed by the U.S. Department of Commerce to categorize business activities. SIC codes have been replaced by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS).
- State Trading Enterprise (STE)
- An enterprise authorized to engage in trade that is owned, sanctioned, or otherwise supported by the government. Many STEs have monopoly control over imports or exports.
- Steady State
- A situation in which the variables in an economic model (e.g., population, the labor force, output, per capita income, the capital stock, etc.) change at constant percentage rates over time. The rates of change may differ from one variable to another, but they must be consistent with each other within the confines of the model. These rates of change may be positive, zero or negative.
- Stolper-Samuelson Effect
- The tendency for an increase in the price of one good A relative to the price of another good B to increase the prices of factors of production that are used relatively intensively in the production of A, and to decrease the prices of factors that are used relatively intensively in the production of B.
- Stunting
- When a child has a very low height compared to other children of the same age. (The technical definition is two standard deviations or more below the median height for age of the reference population.) Stunting is an indicator of long-term or chronic malnutrition.
- Subsidy
- Financial assistance (often from the government) to a specific group of producers or consumers.
- Subsistence Crop
- A crop produced primarily or exclusively for home consumption rather than for sale on the market.
- Sunk Costs
- Expenditures that, once made, cannot be recovered.
- Superior Good
- A good whose income elasticity of demand is greater than one, so that a 1% increase in income leads to more than a 1% increase in consumption of that good. All superior goods are also normal goods, but not all normal goods are superior goods.
- Supply Curve
- A diagrammatic representation of the relationship between the supply of a good and its price, usually with price on the vertical axis and quantity supplied on the horizontal axis.
- Support Price
- A price above the market equilibrium price. Support prices are generally used by governments to increase producer incomes.
- Sustainable Development
- Economic development that (1) takes full account of negative and positive environmental impacts occurring during the development process, and (2) places appropriate weight on the well-being of not only the current generation but also future generations.