- Industry: Economy; Printing & publishing
- Number of terms: 15233
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A term much used by environmentalists, meaning economic growth that can continue in the long term without non-renewable resources being used up or pollution becoming intolerable. Mainstream economists use the term, too, to describe a rate of growth that an economy can sustain indefinitely without causing a rise in inflation.
Industry:Economy
The risk that remains after diversification, also known as market risk or undiversifiable risk. It is systematic risk that determines the return earned on a well-diversified portfolio of assets.
Industry:Economy
Assets you can touch: buildings, machinery, gold, works of art, and so on. Contrast with intangible assets.
Industry:Economy
Often used to describe a tax on goods produced abroad imposed by the government of the country to which they are exported. Many countries have reduced such tariffs as part of the process of freeing up world trade.
Industry:Economy
Doing everything possible within the law to reduce your tax bill. Learned Hand, an American judge, once said: “There is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible … nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands. ” Contrast with tax evasion.
Industry:Economy
Total tax paid in a period as a proportion of total income in that period. It can refer to personal, corporate or national income.
Industry:Economy
Low-tax policies pursued by some countries in the hope of attracting international businesses and capital. Economists usually favor competition in any form. But some say that tax competition is often a beggar-thy-neighbor policy, which can reduce another country’s tax base, or force it to change its mix of taxes, or stop it taxing in the way it would like. Economists who favor tax competition often cite a 1956 article by Charles Tiebout (1924–68) entitled "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures". In it he argued that, faced with a choice of different combinations of tax and government services, taxpayers will choose to locate where they get closest to the mixture they want. Variations in tax rates among different countries are good, because they give taxpayers more choice and thus more chance of being satisfied. This also puts pressure on governments to be efficient. Thus measures to harmonize taxes are a bad idea. There is at least one big caveat to this theory. Tiebout assumed, crucially, that taxpayers are highly mobile and able to move to wherever their preferred combination of taxes and benefits is on offer. But many taxpayers, including the great majority of workers, are not able to move easily. Tax competition may make it harder to redistribute from rich to poor through the tax system by allowing the rich to move to where taxes are not redistributive.
Industry:Economy
Paying less tax than you are legally obliged to. Contrast with tax avoidance. There may be a thin line between the two, but as Denis Healey, a former British chancellor, once put it, “The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison wall. ”
Industry:Economy
A country or designated zone that has low or no taxes, or highly secretive banks, and often a warm climate and sandy beaches, which make it attractive to foreigners bent on tax avoidance or even tax evasion.
Industry:Economy
A crucial ingredient of economic growth. Economists often used to take a certain rate of technological progress for granted, but in new endogenous growth theory they make more effort to measure accurately and better understand what causes differences in the rate of technical change.
Industry:Economy
