BRIC is an acronym coined by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill for the emerging economic bloc of Brazil, Russia, India and China.
Economists believed that by 2050 these four countries would become the dominant suppliers of industrial goods, services and raw materials.
This dominance will be due to their low cost of labor and production.
Critics argued that countries’ raw material resources were limitless, and growth models ignored the finite nature of fossil fuels, uranium and other critical, intensively used resources.
The acronym was changed to BRICS in 2010 when South Africa joined the BRIC group.
An economist is an expert who studies the relationship between a society’s resources and its production or output, using a number of different indicators to predict future trends.
An absolute advantage is when a manufacturer can provide a greater quantity of a product or service for the same price or the same quantity at a lower price than its competitors.
Animal spirits come from the Latin spiritus animalis: “breath that awakens the human mind.” It was introduced by the British economist John Maynard Keynes in 1936.
Autarky refers to a state of self-sufficiency and is commonly used to describe countries or economies that seek to reduce their dependence on international trade.
Automatic Stabilizers is a permanent government policy that automatically adjusts tax rates and transfers payments in a way that stabilizes income, consumption, and business spending over the business cycle.
The balance of trade (BOT) is the difference between the value of a country’s imports and exports over a given period and is the largest component of a country’s balance of payments (BOP).
“Best Effort” is a legal term that represents the obligation of a party to a contract to take all possible steps to fulfill the terms of the agreement.