Decision making is the process of making choices by identifying a decision, gathering information, and assessing alternative resolutions. Using a step-by-step decision-making process can help you make more deliberate, thoughtful decisions by organizing relevant information and defining alternatives.

Often a liability representing the differences between the income tax expense associated with the revenues and expenses reported on a corporation’s income statements and the actual income tax appearing on the corporation’s income tax returns.

A balance sheet liability account that reports amounts received in advance of being earned. For example, if a company receives $10,000 today to perform services in the next accounting period, the $10,000 is unearned in this accounting period. It is deferred to the next accounting period by crediting a liability account such as Unearned Revenues. Next period (when it is earned) a journal entry will be made to debit the liability account and to credit a revenue account.

Delegation is when managers use their authority to assign responsibility to others in their workplace, such as their direct reports or co-workers. Delegating tasks is important because the higher-level strategic planning you’re responsible for takes time and energy. You won’t have either of those if you’re bogged down with busywork.

A political system, that ideally gives equal political power to all citizens, defined by individual rights such as freedom of speech, assembly, and the press; fair elections in which virtually all adults are eligible to vote; and in which the government leaves office if it loses.

Demographic data usually refers to the data which the Census Bureau or Canada Stats collects on a neighborhood such as income, education level, etc. This data can be appended to a household record. It isn’t necessarily accurate for any particular household since it is the average for households in that block. But it is usually the only data available.

A property of some utility functions according to which each additional unit of a given variable results in a smaller increment to total utility than did the previous additional unit. Also known as: diminishing marginal returns to consumption.

A disk is a direct access device. Tape drives are not direct access because to find data on them, you have to read all the way through thousands of records to find the one you want. With direct access, you have all data stored at particular addresses. You can access each piece of data directly.

The wages and salaries of the employees working exclusively in a manufacturer’s maintenance department are direct costs of the maintenance department. (However, these costs are indirect product costs, since they will need to be allocated to the products manufactured.)

These low-interest loans are offered directly from the SBA and can be used to recover from a declared disaster. Businesses may use disaster loans to repair or replace real estate, machinery and equipment, and inventory and business assets that were damaged or destroyed.

A measure of the person’s impatience: how much the person values an additional unit of consumption now relative to an additional unit of consumption later. It is the slope of the person’s indifference curve for consumption now and consumption later, minus one. Also known as: subjective discount rate.

A method used to value an investment by discounting its future expected cash flows to find their value today, or net present value. The discount rate is chosen to reflect the risk of the investment. Possible discount rates are the weighted average cost of capital or the discount rate from similar projects.

An economic variable may change either because the things that determine the equilibrium value of that variable have changed (an equilibrium process), or because the system is not in equilibrium so that there exist forces for change that are internal to the model in question (a disequilibrium process). The latter process applies when the economy moves towards a stable equilibrium or away from a tipping point (an unstable equilibrium).

The economic rent that arises when a market is not in equilibrium, for example when there is excess demand or excess supply in a market for some good or service. In contrast, rents that arise in equilibrium are called equilibrium rents.

Magnetic disks are attached to computers. They hold information (records) which can be retrieved very rapidly if the computer knows the address of the information on the disk (Direct Access). In relational databases, the address of records and information within records are kept on indexes which make access to the records very rapid.

Dialed Number Identification. A system whereby you can learn in a call center what number the incoming callers dialed to reach you. Important because many call centers handle calls from many incoming numbers for many purposes, but use the same bank of agents to take the calls. They have to know what number people were dialing so they can react properly to the call.

A technology that produces the same amount at lower cost than alternative technologies irrespective of the prices of inputs. It is capable of producing the same amount of output as the alternative technology with less of at least one input, and not more of any input.