Archetype
The Platonic philosophical idea, referring to pure forms which embody the fundamental characteristics of a thing, Jungian psychology, archetypes refer to a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought, image, etc., universally present in individual psyches.
Classical Dichotomy
Consumer Price Index (CPI)
The U.S. CPI is a time series measure of the price level of consumer goods and services calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on a monthly basis. The BLS routinely computes different versions of the CPI that are used for different purposes. For example, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) is representative of the buying habits of approximately 80 percent of U.S. households that live in Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and in urban places of 2,500 inhabitants or more.
Financial Instability Hypothesis
Financial Stability
Unlike monetary stability, there is a much broader spectrum of definitions financial stability, and consensus only seems to exist in so far as financial stability is deemed a ‘good thing’ and that it is mostly noticed by its absence. Broadly speaking, one can distinguish between a systems approach—primarily linking financial stability to a well-functioning financial system—and a more narrow definition relating to the (excess) volatility of an observable financial variable, such as asset price volatility or interest rate smoothness. From a historic perspective, one can broadly distinguish between three types of financial instability. First, there is volatility-based instability, such as the crises of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in the 1980s and 1990s, the 1987 stock market crash, the 1994 emerging market bond market instability, the 1998 Russian default, the Argentinean default in 2001 and most recently, the US subprime crisis that started in 2007. A second type of instability is stress-based instability, which is often triggered by the default of an individual institution. This type of instability commonly sees severe market disturbances where operational problems can trigger cross-border contagion. Instances of stress-based instability include the insolvency of the Austrian Credit-Anstalt in 1931, Guardian National Bank and First National Bank in Detroit in 1933, the collapse of the German Bankhaus Herstatt in 1974, the folding of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International in 1991, the Barings scandal in 1995, the failure of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998 and the most recent string of institutional failures, from Northern Rock to Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and the American International Group (AIG). Lastly, there are instances of crisis-based financial instability that are largely characterized by a triggering development that originates in the real economy or the financial system. Costly bank insolvencies and major adjustments in the level of asset prices tend to follow. During this type of financial instability, there is often a very strong (reinforcing) interaction between the financial sector and the real economy, with strong contagion effects both domestically and internationally. Aside from the Great Depression, the Scandinavian banking crisis in the late 1980s, the bursting of the Japanese asset bubble in the 1990s, the Mexican crisis (1994–95) and the Asian financial crisis all fall into this crisis. While no episode of financial upheaval neatly fits into any one of the three categories, a classification can be informative for policy purposes. The current global financial crisis is an important case in point; what started as distant volatility rumblings of market-based financial instability in the sub-prime market in mid-2007 has snowballed into a fully blown global crisis with major financial instability across several market and institutional segments.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
Gross domestic product (GDP) is the most widely used measure of U.S. output. It is defined as the market value of the goods and services produced by labour and property located in the United States. Because the labour and property are located in the United States, the suppliers (that is, the workers and, for property, the owners) may be either U.S. residents or residents of the rest of the world.
Index number theory
Price index formulas can be evaluated based on their relation to economic concepts (like cost of living) or on their mathematical properties. Several different tests of such properties have been proposed in index number theory literature, which was pioneered by the American economist Irving Fisher (1867-1947).
Keynesian Economics
Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA)
Metropolitan Statistical Areas (metro areas) are geographic entities delineated by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for use by federal statistical agencies in collecting, tabulating, and publishing federal statistics. A metro area contains a core urban area with a population of 50,000 or more (an urban core of at least 10,000 but less than 50,000 is referred to as micropolitan statistical area). Each metro or micro area consists of one or more counties and includes the counties containing the core urban area, as well as any adjacent counties that have a high degree of social and economic integration (as measured by commuting to work) with the urban core.
Mortgage-Backed Security
Marxist Urban Theory
Monetarism
Monetary stability
Consensus with regard to the definition of monetary stability has emerged over the last 10 years and permits various notions ranging from stability of the (anticipated) value of money to price-level stability or even low levels of inflation. Indeed, there is also broad agreement that monetary stability is a vital ingredient for sustainable economic growth, that there is unique institutional responsibility for it (i.e. the central bank) and that the authorities need to be engaged in continuous efforts to achieve it.
National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA)
The national income and product accounts (NIPAs) are produced by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Much like the balance sheet, the profit and loss account and cash flow statements that provide accounting summaries on the economic position of corporations, the NIPAs are a set of economic accounts that provide information on the value and composition of output produced in the United States during a given period and on the distribution and uses of the income generated by that production. A central feature of the NIPAs is gross domestic product (GDP), which measures the value of the goods and services produced by the U.S. economy in a given time period.
Price Deflator
Among price indices, a price deflator is the ratio of the current-dollar value of a price index series to its corresponding chained-dollar, real value. For example, the GDP deflator measures the ratio of nominal (or current-price) GDP to the real (or chain volume) measure of GDP, i.e., it is defined as (Nominal GDP / Real GDP)*100.
Prototype
Original object or form which is a basis for other objects, forms, or for its models and generalizations; An early sample or model built to test a concept or process. In semantics, an instance of a category or a concept that combines its most representative attributes.
Shadow Banking
Securitization
Spatial Economy
Stereotype
A character, story, or object that is based on a known character, story, or object. In Jungian psychology, a universal pattern of thought, present in an individual's unconscious, inherited from the past collective experience of humanity.