| ID Number | A number is assigned to a record to help to relate it to other records in the computer which have the same ID. |
| Identification | The process whereby a customer identifies himself with the company which provides him with products or services |
| Idiosyncratic risk | A risk that only affects a small number of assets at one time. Traders can almost eliminate their exposure to such risks by holding a diverse portfolio of assets affected by different risks. Also known as: diversifiable risk. |
| Ikea effect | The tendency of consumers to place more value on items that required their own labor or ingenuity to create, assemble, or design. |
| Impatience | Any preference to move consumption from the future to the present. This preference may be derived either from pure impatience or diminishing marginal returns to consumption. |
| Import | Buying goods or services from overseas and bringing them into the country. |
| Imports (m) | Goods and services produced in other countries and purchased by domestic households, firms, and the government. |
| In-kind transfers | Public expenditure in the form of free or subsidized services for households rather than in the form of cash transfers. |
| Inactive population | People in the population of working age who are neither employed nor actively looking for paid work. Those working in the home raising children, for example, are not considered as being in the labour force and therefore are classified this way. |
| Inbound marketing | A sales technique that encourages potential buyers to contact a firm directly with no explicit outreach. An example of this is a blog. |
| Incentive | Economic reward or punishment, which influences the benefits and costs of alternative courses of action. |
| Inclusive trade union | A union, representing many firms and sectors, which takes into account the consequences of wage increases for job creation in the entire economy in the long run. |
| Income | The amount of profit, interest, rent, labour earnings, and other payments (including transfers from the government) received, net of taxes paid, measured over a period of time such as a year. The maximum amount that you could consume and leave your wealth unchanged. Also known as: disposable income. See also: gross income. |
| Income effect | The effect that the additional income would have if there were no change in the price or opportunity cost. |
| Income elasticity of demand | The percentage change in demand that would occur in response to a 1% increase in the individual’s income. |
| Income statement | Determines the net income/profit of a business. An annual summary of both income and expenses. |
| Incomplete contract | A contract that does not specify, in an enforceable way, every aspect of the exchange that affects the interests of parties to the exchange (or of others). |
| Increased productivity. | It allows employees to complete work faster since tasks are spread out among a group of individuals rather than a single individual completing all of the necessary steps. |
| Increasing returns to scale | These occur when doubling all of the inputs to a production process more than doubles the output. The shape of a firm’s long-run average cost curve depends both on returns to scale in production and the effect of scale on the prices it pays for its inputs. Also known as: economies of scale. See also: decreasing returns to scale, constant returns to scale. |
| Incremental innovation | Innovation that improves an existing product or process cumulatively. |
| Independence | Working independently is the ability to work self-sufficiently on assigned tasks. You might receive direction on projects from a supervisor or manager, but they can then trust you to accomplish tasks with little to no supervision. |
| Index | A measure of the amount of something in one period of time, compared to the amount of the same thing in a different period of time, called the reference period or base period. It is common to set its value at 100 in the reference period. |
| Indifference curve | A curve of the points which indicate the combinations of goods that provide a given level of utility to the individual. |
| Industrial output | This is an indicator of future economic growth as it is the manufacturing output of the nation. |
| Industrial revolution | A wave of technological advances and organizational changes starting in Britain in the eighteenth century, which transformed an agrarian and craft-based economy into a commercial and industrial economy. |
| Industry | Goods-producing business activity: agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and construction. Manufacturing is the most important component. |
| Inequality aversion | A dislike of outcomes in which some individuals receive more than others. |
| Infant industry | A relatively new industrial sector in a country that has relatively high costs, because its recent establishment means that it has few benefits from learning by doing, its small size deprives it of economies of scale, or a lack of similar firms means that it does not benefit from economies of agglomeration. Temporary tariff protection of this sector or other support may increase productivity in an economy in the long run. |
| Inferior good | A product that will see decreased demand as income levels rise. Note that this does not necessarily imply that the good is defective or made poorly. |
| Inflation | An increase in the general price level in the economy. Usually measured over a year. See also: deflation, disinflation. |
| Inflation targeting | Monetary policy regime where the central bank changes interest rates to influence aggregate demand in order to keep the economy close to an inflation target, which is normally specified by the government. |
| Inflation-adjusted price | Price that takes into account the change in the overall price level. |
| Inflation-stabilizing rate of unemployment | The unemployment rate (at labour market equilibrium) at which inflation is constant. Originally known as the ‘natural rate’ of unemployment. Also known as: non-accelerating rate of unemployment, stable inflation rate of unemployment. See also: equilibrium unemployment. |
| Influentials | In business-to-business, executives who have the authority to make or influence a purchase. |
| Information asymmetry | A situation in which parties to a transaction do not share equivalent information. |
| Infrastructure | The process of maintaining a database: nightly backup, cleaning, merge/purge, deduplication, update, etc. |
| Initiative | Taking initiative means thinking proactively about tasks— not just to check them off a list, but to get them done well. It’s about going the extra mile on the basic tasks you’re assigned, thinking through complications, and taking on work before someone asks you to |
| Innovation | The process of invention and diffusion considered as a whole. |
| Innovation rents | Profits in excess of the opportunity cost of capital that an innovator gets by introducing a new technology, organizational form, or marketing strategy. Also known as: Schumpeterian rents. |
| Innovation system | The relationships among private firms, governments, educational institutions, individual scientists, and other actors involved in the invention, modification, and diffusion of new technologies, and the way that these social interactions are governed by a combination of laws, policies, knowledge, and social norms in force. |
| Inquisitiveness | The quality of wanting to discover as much as you can about things, sometimes in a way that annoys people. |
| Insider trading | The trading of shares based on knowledge that no one else has. It was made illegal in the UK in 1980. |
| Insolvency | When a company becomes unable to pay off its creditors, or its liabilities exceed its assets. |
| Insolvent | Being without enough assets or income to pay debts. |
| Inspirational abilities | The Inspirational Leadership competency is the ability to inspire, to guide people to get the job done, to bring out their best. With inspiration, you can articulate a shared mission in a way that motivates, and offer a sense of common purpose beyond people’s day-to-day tasks. |
| Institution | The laws and informal rules that regulate social interactions among people and between people and the biosphere, sometimes also termed the rules of the game. |
| Institutional investor | A professional money manager who works for private investors and invests via pension and life insurance funds. |
| Intellectual property | Any works or inventions that are original creative designs. The individual or company responsible for the designs will be entitled to apply for a copyright or trademark on the designs. |
| Intellectual property rights | Patents, trademarks, and copyrights. See also: patent, trademark, copyright. |
| Interest rate | The price of bringing some buying power forward in time. See also: nominal interest rate, real interest rate. |
| Interest rate (short-term) | The price of borrowing base money. |
| Interest Rates | Interest rates vary from card to card. As mentioned above, it’s a good idea to go for a card that has an initial 0% APR (annual percentage rate). That way you have a year without any interest whatsoever. As of April 2018, the common APRs offered online for business credit cards was 14%, which is about 2.5 points lower than average for personal cards. |
| Intergenerational elasticity | When comparing parents and grown offspring, the percentage difference in the second generation’s status that is associated with a 1% difference in the adult generation’s status. See also: intergenerational inequality, intergenerational mobility, intergenerational transmission of economic differences. |
| Intergenerational inequality | The extent to which differences in parental generations are passed on to the next generation, as measured by the intergenerational elasticity or the intergenerational correlation. See also: intergenerational elasticity, intergenerational mobility, intergenerational transmission of economic differences. |
| Intergenerational mobility | Changes in the relative economic or social status between parents and children. Upward mobility occurs when the status of a child surpasses that of the parents. Downward mobility is the converse. A widely used measure of intergenerational mobility is the correlation between the positions of parents and children (for example, in their years of schooling or income). Another is the intergenerational elasticity. See also: intergenerational elasticity, intergenerational transmission of economic differences. |
| Intergenerational transmission of economic differences | The processes by which the economic status of the adult sons and daughters comes to resemble the economic status of the parents. See also: intergenerational elasticity, intergenerational mobility. |
| Interim profit statement | This updates shareholders on a company’s unaudited profits for the first half of the financial year. |
| Intermediate good | A product that has been refined and is used as an ingredient, input, or component of other products. |
| Introspection | The ability to evaluate your thoughts and emotions. |
| Invention | The development of new methods of production and new products. |
| Inventory | Goods held by a firm prior to sale or use, including raw materials, and partially-finished or finished goods intended for sale. |
| Investment (i) | Expenditure on newly produced capital goods (machinery and equipment) and buildings, including new housing. |
| Investment function (aggregate) | An equation that shows how investment spending in the economy as a whole depends on other variables, namely, the interest rate and profit expectations. See also: interest rate, profit. |
| Investment trust | A company on the stock exchange that only invests in other companies. |
| Invisible hand | An idiom first coined by Adam Smith. In modern usage, it refers to the tendency of decisions by individuals to maximize the aggregate benefit to society. |
| Invoice factoring | Invoice factoring involves a business selling its invoices on to a third party, who will then add their own fee to the charges and seek the money from the debtor. |
| Invoice financing | If your small business struggles with cash flow because you’re waiting on invoices to be paid, you can use invoice financing, also known as factoring |
| Irrational exuberance | A process by which assets become overvalued. The expression was first used by Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board, in 1996. It was popularized as an economic concept by the economist Robert Shiller. |
| IS | Information Systems (Also MIS) – the part of the company responsible for the central data processing operations. |
| Isocost line | A line that represents all combinations that cost a given total amount. |
| Isoprofit curve | A curve on which all points yield the same profit. |
| Isototal benefits curve | The combinations of the probability of innovation and the total benefits to society from a firm’s innovation that yield the same total benefits. |
| Issuance | New membership interests may be created, issued and sold to new members. |
| IVR | Interactive Voice Response a piece of equipment connected with an ACD which permits inbound callers to a call center to choose their own routing of the call (“Push 1 for Sales, Push 2 for Service…) |
