| A | B |
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| Acid deposition | The accumulation of acids or acidic compounds on the surface of the Earth, in lakes or streams, or on objects or vegetation near the Earth's surface, as a result of their separation from the atmosphere |
| Acid precipitation | Precipitation abnormally high in sulfuric and nitric acid content that is caused by atmospheric pollutants. |
| Active solar energy systems | A system designed to convert solar radiation into usable energy for space, water heating, or other uses. It requires a mechanical device, usually a pump or fan, to collect the sun's energy. |
| Agglomeration | A concentration of services clustered together; the lower the cost of production (firms have competing multiple suppliers, greater specialization and division of labor result) and the greater the market that the firm can sell into. |
| Air pollution | The addition of harmful chemicals to the atmosphere. The most serious air pollution results from the burning of fossil fuels, especially in internal-combustion engines. |
| Biodiversity | The number and variety of organisms found within a specified geographic region. |
| Biomass fuel | living and recently dead biological material that can be used as fuel or for industrial production. |
| Break-of-bulk point | The point at which a cargo is unloaded and broken up into smaller units prior to delivery, minimizing transport costs. This frequently happens at waterfront sites where imports are often processed to cut costs. |
| Breeder reactor | A nuclear reactor that produces as well as consumes fissionable material, especially one that produces more fissionable material than it consumes |
| Bulk-gaining industry | making something that gains volume or weight during production |
| Bulk-reducing industry | making something that looses volume or weight during production |
| Chlorofluorocarbon | any of several volatile, inert, saturated compounds of carbon, fluorine, chlorine, and hydrogen: used as refrigerants, foam-blowing agents, solvents, and, formerly, as aerosol propellants until scientists became concerned about depletion of the atmospheric ozone layer. |
| Comparative Advantage | the ability of an individual or group to carry out an economic activity, such as production, at a lower cost and more efficiently than another entity |
| Conservation | the careful utilization of a natural resource in order to prevent depletion |
| Consumer goods | goods that are ready for consumption in satisfaction of human wants, as clothing or food, and are not utilized in any further production |
| Cottage industry | the production, for sale, of goods at home, as the making of handicrafts by rural families. |
| Dependency Theory | the notion that resources flow from a "periphery" of poor and underdeveloped states to a "core" of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former |
| Development | A process of economic growth, in which a country tries to improve their level of material wealth through the diffusion and realization of resources. |
| Ecotourism | Tourism involving travel to areas of natural or ecological interest, typically under the guidance of a naturalist, for the purpose of observing wildlife and learning about the environment. |
| Energy Consumption | The level of demand a given country puts on resources available in the world to crate energy. |
| Enfranchisement | to grant a franchise to; admit to citizenship, esp. to the right of voting. |
| Entrepot | a commercial center where goods are received for distribution, transshipment, or repackaging |
| Fission | Also called nuclear fission. Physics. the splitting of the nucleus of an atom into nuclei of lighter atoms, accompanied by the release of energy |
| Footloose industry | Industry that can be sited in any of a number of places, often because transport costs are unimportant. Such industries may have raw materials that are commonly available, for example a bakery |
| Fordist | the system formulated in Henry Ford's automotive factories, in which workers work on a production line, performing specialized tasks repetitively |
| Foreign direct investment | investing in United States businesses by foreign citizens (often involves stock ownership of the business) |
| Fossil fuel | any combustible organic material, as oil, coal, or natural gas, derived from the remains of former life. |
| Four Asian Tigers | The term Four Asian Tigers or Asian Tigers refers to the highly industrialized economies of Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. These regions were noted for maintaining exceptionally high growth rates and rapid industrialization between the early 1960s and 1990s. In the 21st century, all four tigers became advanced economies and high-income economies. |
| Fusion | the process by which multiple nuclei join together to form a heavier nucleus resulting in a release of immense energy but without radioactive waste. |
| Gender empowerment index | is a measure of inequalities between men's and women's opportunities in a country. It combines inequalities in three areas: political participation and decision making, economic participation and decision making, and power over economic resources. |
| Geothermal energy | energy obtained from within the earth, originating in its core; also, energy produced by extracting the earth's internal heat and turning it into other energy (mechanical or electric) |
| Global warming | an increase in the earth's average atmospheric temperature that causes corresponding changes in climate and that may result from the greenhouse effect |
| Greenhouse effect | an atmospheric heating phenomenon, caused by short-wave solar radiation being readily transmitted inward through the earth's atmosphere but longer-wavelength heat radiation less readily transmitted outward, owing to its absorption by atmospheric carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, and other gases; thus, the rising level of carbon dioxide is viewed with concern. |
| Gross Domestic Product | The total market value of all the goods and services produced within the borders of a nation during a specified period. |
| Gross National Product | the total monetary value of all final goods and services produced by a country during one year in side and outside of its borders. |
| Half life | the time required for one half the atoms of a given amount of a radioactive substance to disintegrate |
| Human development index | The Human Development Index (HDI) is an index combining normalized measures of life expectancy, literacy, educational attainment, and GDP per capita for countries worldwide |
| Hydroelectric power | form of energy generated by the conversion of free-falling water to electricity; the generation of electricity by using the motive power of water |
| Industrial Location Theory | A model of industrial location proposed by A. Weber (1909, trans. 1929), which assumes that industrialists choose a least-cost location for the development of new industry |
| Industrial Revolution | the totality of the changes in economic and social organization that began about 1760 in England and later in other countries, characterized chiefly by the replacement of hand tools with power-driven machines, as the power loom and the steam engine, and by the concentration of industry in large establishments |
| Infanticide | the practice of killing newborn infants |
| Infrastructure | the fundamental facilities and systems serving a country, city, or area, as transportation and communication systems, power plants, and schools. |
| The ‘New International division of labor’ | The phenomena of the last 40 years of LDCs being centers for manufacturing goods for market in MDCs and MDCs creating wealth through investment in LDCs. |
| International Monetary Fund | an international organization that promotes the stabilization of the world's currencies and maintains a monetary pool from which member nations can draw in order to correct a deficit in their balance of payments: a specialized agency of the United Nations. |
| Just in time delivery | an inventory strategy that reduces in-process inventory, waste, and eliminates the costs of warehousing inventory. |
| Labor intensive industry | Labor Intensive Industry refers to that industry which requires substantial amount of human labor to produce the industrial products |
| Less developed country | Countries with a poorly developed industrial base and poor indicators of social and economic development. |
| Literacy rate | Percentage of a given population that can read and write. |
| Manufacturing | The process of creating a product for sale. |
| Maquiladora | An assembly plant in Mexico, especially one along the border between the United States and Mexico, to which foreign materials and parts are shipped and from which the finished product is returned to the original market. |
| Market Area | The space in which a company intends to sell their product. |
| More developed country | Countries with a well developed industrial base and high indicators of social and economic development. |
| NAFTA | North American Free Trade Agreement reduces trade barriers between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. |
| Nonrenewable energy | Energy sources which cannot be recreated once expended. |
| OPEC | Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries; an organization in which global exporters of petroleum which cooperate to maintain appropriate levels of petroleum to meet demand and stabilize the price of that commodity. |
| Outsourcing | to obtain goods or services from an outside source (particularly from MDC to LDCs) |
| Ozone | a form of oxygen, O3, with a peculiar odor suggesting that of weak chlorine, produced when an electric spark or ultraviolet light is passed through air or oxygen. It is found in the atmosphere in minute quantities, esp. after a thunderstorm, is a powerful oxidizing agent, and is thus biologically corrosive. In the upper atmosphere, it absorbs ultraviolet rays, thereby preventing them from reaching the surface of the earth. |
| Passive solar energy systems | Passive solar technologies are means of using sunlight for useful energy without use of active mechanical systems |
| Petroleum | A thick, flammable, yellow-to-black mixture of gaseous, liquid, and solid hydrocarbons that occurs naturally beneath the Earth's surface |
| Post-Fordist | the dominant system of economic production, consumption and associated socio-economic phenomena, in most industrialized countries since the late 20th century |
| Primary sector | The manufacturing industries that aggregate, pack, package, purify or process the raw materials close to the primary producers include agriculture, agribusiness, fishing, forestry and all mining and quarrying industries. |
| Productivity | A measure of efficiency of the production of goods and services having exchange value |
| Purchasing power parity | An adjustment of the value of currency in terms of the goods they can buy. |
| Radioactivity | the phenomenon, exhibited by and being a property of certain elements, of spontaneously emitting radiation resulting from changes in the nuclei of atoms of the element. |
| Raw materials | A raw material is something that is acted upon or used by organisms, or by human labor or industry, for use as a building material to create some product or structure |
| Recycling | to treat or process (used or waste materials) so as to make suitable for reuse |
| Right-to-work state | prohibit agreements between trade unions and employers making membership or payment of union dues or "fees" a condition of employment, either before or after hiring |
| Secondary sector | This sector generally takes the output of the primary sector and manufactures finished goods or where they are suitable for use by other businesses, for export, or sale to domestic consumers |
| Self-sufficiency | Self-sufficiency refers to the state of not requiring any outside aid, support, or interaction, for survival; |
| Site factors | Availability of land, labor, and capital. |
| Situation factors | The associated costs of shipping materials to and from a factory. |
| Structural adjustment program | economic policies which countries must follow in order to qualify for new World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans and help them make debt repayments on the older debts owed to commercial banks, governments and the World Bank. |
| Tertiary sector | Tertiary sector of economy involves the provision of services to businesses as well as final consumers. Services may involve the transport, distribution and sale of goods from producer to a consumer as may happen in wholesaling and retailing, or may involve the provision of a service, such as in pest control or entertainment |
| Textile | Textile any cloth or goods produced by weaving, knitting, or felting |
| Threshold/range | The distance a good can travel from the point of production or distribution and still be useful. |
| Trading bloc | A trade bloc is a large free trade area formed by one or more tax, tariff and trade agreements. Typically trade pacts that define such a bloc specify formal adjudication bodies |
| Value added | refers to the additional value of a commodity over the cost of commodities used to produce it from the previous stage of production |
| World Bank | The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides financial and technical assistance] to developing countries for development programs (e.g. bridges, roads, schools, etc.) with the stated goal of reducing poverty |
| World Systems Theory | Immanuel Wallerstein, a leading advocate of the approach, uses the same terminology. He characterizes the world system as a set of mechanisms which redistributes resources from the periphery to the core. In his terminology, the core is the developed, industrialized, democratic part of the world, and the periphery is the underdeveloped, raw materials-exporting, poor part of the world; the market being the means by which the core exploits the periphery. |
| World Trade Organization | The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments |
