AP HUG Unit 6 Vocab

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)

Investment made by a foreign company in the economy of another country.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

The value of the total output of goods and services produced in a country in a given time period (normally one year).

Gross National Income (GNI)

The value of the output of goods and service produced in a country in a year, including money that leaves and enters the country.

Housing Bubble

A rapid increase in the value of houses followed by a sharp decline in their value.

Microfinance

Provision of small loans and other financial services to individuals and small businesses in developing countries.

Millennium Development Goals

Eight international development goals that all members of the United Nations have agreed to achieve by 2015.

Primary Sector

The portion of the economy concerned with the direct extraction of materials from the Earth’s surface, generally through agriculture, although sometimes by mining, fishing, and forestry.

Productivity

The value of a particular product compared to the amount of labor needed to make it.

Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)

The amount of money needed in one country to purchase the same goods and services in another country; PPP adjusts income figures to account for differences among countries in the cost of goods.

Secondary Sector

The portion of the economy concerned with manufacturing useful products through processing, transforming, and assembling raw materials.

Tertiary Sector

The portion of the economy concerned with transportation, communications, and utilities, sometimes extended to the provision of all goods and services to people in exchange for payment.

Uneven Development

Development of core regions at the expense of those on the periphery.

Value Added

The gross value of a product minus the cost of raw materials and energy.

Maquiladora

A factory built by a US company in Mexico near the US border, to take advantage of the much lower labor costs in Mexico.

Outsourcing

A decision by a corporation to turn over much of the responsibility for production to independent suppliers.

Post-Fordist Production

Adoption by companies of flexile work rules, such as the allocation of workers to teams that perform a variety of tasks.

Right-to-work Law

A US law that prevents a union and a company from negotiating a contract that requires workers to join the union as a condition of employment.

Site Factors

Location factors related to the costs of factors of production inside a plant, such as land, labor, and capital.

Situation Factors

Location factors related to the transportation of materials into and from a factory.

Vertical Integration

An approach typical of traditional mass production in which a company controls all phases of a highly complex production process.