Externalities

Opportunity Cost

The most valuable alternative that must be sacrificed to satisfy a want; it is the thing that we must do without when we decide upon a particular allocation of resources; the true monetary and non-monetary costs of any action.

Investment in Human Capital

The sum total of abilities, skills, and knowledge people have that permit them to perform work or services; the using of preparatory occupational time wisely for the purpose of enhancing potential productivity.

Interdependency

The process by which subsystems are dependent on one another to survive; the mutual dependence of one set of variables upon another in order to function.

Indexing/Indexes

The use of statistics to describe data; the use of numbers to compare prices from a base year (such as the Consumer Price Index); an economic tool to determine the relationships among statistics derived from different time periods..