Economic benefits. Summary: Economic needs, goods and resources, the essence and classification of Economic goods and needs

Economic needs - it is a lack of something or a need for something to support the life and development of an individual, groups of individuals, a firm and society as a whole. Economic needs are incentives or driving forces for the revitalization of human labor activity. The needs are divided into primary and secondary. The primary ones include human needs for food, clothing, housing; they can be replaced with one another. Secondary are needs of a spiritual nature that can be replaced with each other. For example, watching TV, movies, reading books, newspapers, etc. According to their purpose, needs can be subdivided into personal and industrial.

All the needs for primary and secondary needs can be attributed to personal ones. Production needs - this is the need of society for resources for the production of the same primary and secondary needs.

American sociologist Maslow proposed a special "pyramid of needs" that describes all possible types of needs. (Fig. 2.1.)

Rice. 2.1. Classification of human needs according to A. Maslow

Only with the awareness of needs does a person develop motivation to work, which is understood as an incentive to work to achieve personal or collective goals. In this case, needs turn into another form - economic interest.

Economic interest - these are objective incentives for economic activity associated with the desire of people to meet the growing material and spiritual needs. Economic interest is the main driving force behind the progress of the entire economy. They can be personal, collective, and public. And the ways of realizing motivation or putting it into practice are called incentive, which is subdivided into material and moral.

Social needs are infinite in time, in quantitative and qualitative terms. As the history of civilization shows, in the process of satisfying needs, more and more new needs are formed. The continuous increase in needs is called an economic law. elevation of needs.

Economic benefits. Means that satisfy needs are called goods. Some of them are available in almost unlimited quantities (for example, air), others in limited quantities. The latter are called economic goods. They are made up of various things and services.

A. Marshall defines good as "a desirable thing that satisfies a human need." JB Say defines good as "the means we have to meet our needs."

The classification of goods, as well as needs, is characterized by great diversity.

First of all, according to the terms of use, economic benefits are divided into long-term and one-time, according to their purpose - direct and indirect.

The classification of economic benefits will be incomplete if you do not disclose their division into material and intangible. Material goods are understood as means that satisfy the physical needs of a person.

According to neoclassical views, the value (value) of economic goods depends on their rarity and on the intensity of needs.

To obtain economic benefits, you need the necessary funds - resources.

Economic resources - these are the primary sources, factors used to produce goods. Modern economic science classifies land, labor, capital and entrepreneurial ability as resources. In the conditions of the development of the scientific and technological revolution, the factor of production becomes - information, intellectual costs and has a cost.

The concept of "land" includes all natural resources: agricultural land, forests, mineral deposits, water resources of rivers, seas and oceans.

The resource "capital" means an invested, working source of income in the form of means of production.

« Work"Is a very broad term that implies qualifications, educational level, physical and other abilities that can be used in the production of goods and services.

"Entrepreneurial ability" is a set of abilities and skills that allow him to find a rational combination of all other resources for the production and sale of goods and services. A talented entrepreneur makes smart and consistent decisions and uses technical innovations. If necessary, he takes a justified risk.

All economic resources (from a quantitative point of view) have one common property - scarcity and scarcity. Resource constraints are relative. This means that, given the achieved level of economic development, the available resources are, as a rule, less than necessary to meet all needs. Naturally, with the development of social production, the limited resources are overcome, but with some delay in time. Therefore, at any given moment in time, there is always a shortage of economic resources. Hence, we can conclude that the simultaneous and complete satisfaction of all the needs of society is fundamentally impossible. The consequence of the limited resources is the desire for their rational use and the use of interchangeability and complementarity of economic benefits.

Resources such as land, labor and capital are interchangeable within certain limits, which is expressed in a production function, which in general looks like this:

where Q- volume of production;

f- functional dependence;

F, F2,… ..Fn- the resources used.

Along with the concept of "resources", economics operates with the concept of "factors of production".

Production factors - these are functioning, producing, resources actually involved in production.

2.2 Social production: stages, efficiency and production capabilities

Social production. Using the concepts of "need", "good" and "resources", it is possible to define the category "social production".

Production is a purposeful activity of people aimed at satisfying their needs. Nature does not provide a person with the necessary goods in a ready-made form, they need produce.

In the production process, three main factors interact - labor, capital, land. The end result of production is the creation of tangible and intangible goods and services. In accordance with this, social production consists of material and non-material production (Fig. 2.2.).

Rice. 2.2. Scheme of the structure of social production

Material production includes industries for the production of material goods and the provision of material services. In the branches of intangible production, special intangible benefits (spiritual values) are created, as well as intangible services (health care, education, scientific consulting, etc.) are provided.

The term "production" without the concept of "social" is not specific enough. The fact is that the production process is carried out not by isolated subjects of the economy, but in society - together with other subjects, in the system of social division of labor. As a result of social production, public goods are created, which take the form of a product (product). A product, unlike a good, has a price signal, but it is not yet a commodity. The product becomes a commodity in the medium of exchange. Good → product → product (good).

A social product in its movement goes through a number of interrelated stages: production, distribution, exchange and consumption (Fig. 2.3.)

Production - the starting point at which the product is created and from which its movement begins.

The inequality of individuals in participation in production inevitably entails their inequality in the distribution and consumption of products.

Rice. 2.3. Diagram of the stages of the movement of a social product

Distribution of public products - implies not only the distribution of goods and services, but also resources and labor. In the market economy, distribution is carried out under the influence of the price mechanism, and not at the direction of anyone.

One of the cardinal questions of economic theory "for whom to produce" is related to the distribution of production goods. Distribution can be viewed both in terms of efficiency and in terms of social justice. Distribution efficiently in the case when the amount of goods satisfies more fully the needs of one individual without harming the needs of another person. (Pareto - efficiency).

Exchange mediates the link between production and distribution. It is due to socialization and the distribution of labor, takes place in production itself in the form of an exchange of activities between employees of a firm, industry, region, etc.

Consumption, according to A. Marshall, this is a kind of negative production, since in the process of consumption there is a decrease or destruction of the usefulness of the product. However, consumption cannot be understood in the literal sense as destruction of utility. The fact is that consumption itself is divided into two types: personal and production.

The first type - personal consumption - is carried out outside of production and does not concern it (eating, drinking, wearing clothes, reading, etc.). This is indeed the destruction of utility, and it has an individual character, if you do not consider totalitarian regimes in which power structures have always sought to minimize individual acts and decisions. However, there are goods and services that by their nature involve collective consumption: football matches, theatrical performances, movies, roads, etc.

Productive consumption involves the use of indirect goods or means of production intended for productive use, which create new goods.

All elements of the stages: production, distribution, exchange and consumption function independently and at the same time relate to each other as integral parts of each separate stage, while they are inextricably linked. For example, there is no production without exchange, there is no exchange without production or consumption without exchange, there is no exchange without consumption.

To analyze the development of social production in economic science, the category "efficiency" is used.

In general terms, efficiency can be defined as the ratio between the result and costs ( ). Consequently, efficiency is a relative value, not an absolute one. In other words, the lower the cost and the larger the result, the higher the efficiency.

Efficiency can be a separate business unit (enterprise, firm, household).

Efficiency is expressed in both natural and monetary units. Scorecards are needed to measure performance. The most important of these is the productivity of social labor (PS).

where n is the product in kind or in monetary terms;

T - labor costs in certain units.

Choice production capabilities. A consequence of the limited resources is competition between alternative purposes of their use. Almost all resources can be used to meet a wide variety of needs, for example, oil can be used as a feedstock for fuel, as currency from its export proceeds, as a raw material for the chemical industry, etc. In other words, society, as well as an individual, is always faced with the task of choosing directions and methods of using limited resources for various competing purposes. The method for solving this problem is one of the subjects of study of economic theory.

The limited resources dictate the need to choose the maximum amount of economic benefits with the full use of available resources. In solving these problems, economists make extensive use of various kinds of models. For example, P. Samuelson cites the choice of the production of guns and oil, which is an alternative to military and civilian production.

This method shows the impossibility, given limited resources, to produce many guns and oil at the same time. Using this simplest model, one of the main questions of economic science can be formulated: “what, how and how much to produce” (Fig. 2.4.)

Rice. 2.4. Production capabilities dependency graph

Economic agents are subjects of economic relations involved in the production, distribution, exchange and consumption of economic goods. The main economic agents are individuals, households (families), firms (enterprises), the state and its divisions. In turn, firms can act as individual enterprises, partnerships and corporations.

Economic agents communicate with each other through the movement of economic goods along the chain: production, distribution, exchange, consumption, which is a kind of circuit.

Economic circulation - this is the movement of economic goods, accompanied by a counter flow of cash income and expenses of agents.

Let's abstractly imagine that the main economic agents are households, firms and the state. Households have a demand for consumer goods and services, while at the same time they are suppliers of such economic resources as labor, land and capital. And firms demand (make a demand) for all resources and at the same time offer goods and services to households.

In the circuit shown in fig. 2.7., The flows of supply and demand are concretized, replaced by their resources, income, expenses, goods and services.

In any economic system, a household acts as the main supplier of resources, a consumer of goods and services, and a link in the formation of human capital (Fig. 2.5.)

Rice. 2.5. The role of the household in the cycle of goods

Human capital - it is capital embodied in people in the form of ability to work, qualifications, knowledge and experience. By its nature, it is compared with physical capital, since its formation requires the expenditure of funds and money to the detriment of current consumption, and also serves as a source of increasing labor productivity and earnings in the future. Requires "depreciation costs" in the form of rest, rehabilitation and qualifications renewal. However, human capital, in contrast to physical capital, is more risky and the investment period is much longer. If the investment period of physical capital reaches up to 5 years, then such a form is invested in a person, as education can last more than 20 years.

Household demand is expressed in expenditures that are paid in cash in the markets for goods and services. Household expenses are the revenue of firms from the sale of these goods and services. The purchase of the resources needed by firms is a cash cost — the costs of firms. In turn, households, supplying firms with the necessary resources (capital, labor, land), in return receive income in cash (wages, rent, interest).

Rice. 2.6. Diagram of the simplest models of the circulation of goods. Outside arrows - demand in monetary form, internal - in kind

Households and firms pay taxes to the state, in turn from the state they receive transfer payments and subsidies, respectively. In addition, the state is a major customer of raw materials, goods and services for the maintenance of the army, health care, education and social protection of the population.

2 Cit. Quoted from: McConnell C.R., Bru S.L. Economics / Per. from English In 2 vols. M., 1992.Vol. 1.P. 18.

It is impossible to reduce contemporary economic theory to this alone. However, the contradiction between the unlimited needs and the limited resources forms the axis around which economic life revolves, and the core of the economy as a science. A household, a firm, and the entire national economy have to constantly make a choice of whether to spend their resources on the purchase or production of which goods, which are almost always limited.

Interlocking, mobility and interchangeability of economic resources

Resources are intertwined. For example, such an economic resource as knowledge is used when natural resources tend to be consumed more rationally on the basis of new knowledge (scientific advances). Knowledge is an important element of such a resource as labor, when it is assessed from a qualitative point of view and attention is paid to the qualifications of workers, which depends primarily on the education (knowledge) they have received. Knowledge (primarily technological) ensures an increase in the level of equipment utilization, i.e. real capital. Finally, they (especially managerial knowledge) allow entrepreneurs to organize the production of goods and services in the most rational way.

Economic resources are mobile (mobile), as they can move in space (within the country, between countries), although the degree of their mobility is different. The least mobile are natural resources, the mobility of many of which is close to zero (it is difficult to move land from one place to another, although it is possible). The labor force is more mobile, as can be seen from the internal and external migration of the labor force in the world on a noticeable scale (see Chapter 36). Entrepreneurial abilities are even more mobile, although they often do not move by themselves, but together with labor resources and / and capital (this is due to the fact that the carriers of entrepreneurial abilities are either hired managers or owners of capital). The last two resources are the most mobile - capital (especially money) and knowledge.

The intertwining of resources and their mobility partly reflect their other property - interchangeability (alternativeness). If a farmer needs to increase grain production, then he can do it this way: expand the cultivated area (use additional natural resources), or hire additional workers (increase the use of labor), or expand his fleet of equipment and equipment (increase his capital), or improve the organization labor on the farm (to make wider use of their entrepreneurial abilities), or, finally, to use new types of seeds (to apply new knowledge). The farmer has this choice because economic resources are interchangeable (alternative).

Usually this interchangeability is not complete. For example, human resources cannot completely replace capital, otherwise workers will be left without equipment and inventory. Economic resources replace each other easily at first, and then more and more difficult. Thus, with a constant number of tractors, it is possible to increase the number of workers on the farm by obliging them to work in two shifts. However, it will be very difficult to hire more workers and organize systematic work in three shifts, unless by dramatically increasing their wages,

The entrepreneur (organizer of production) constantly meets and uses the specified properties of economic resources. Indeed, in conditions of limited resources, he is forced to find the most rational combination of them, using interchangeability.

Cobb-Douglas model

An illustration of the intertwining and alternativeness of economic resources can be a simple, based on only two factors of production, the Cobb-Douglas model (named after two American economists).

Resource markets concept

5. On the basis of economic resources, the production of economic benefits is carried out. When resources are limited (scarce), one has to choose what goods to produce and what production possibilities are there. In this case, the concept of alternative (imputed) value (costs) is used, which means that which one has to give up in order to produce the desired good.

6. The increase in opportunity costs as each additional unit of production is released is the essence of the law of increasing opportunity costs. Closely related to it is the law of diminishing returns, which means that the increase in output becomes smaller as new units of economic resource are added, combined with a constant number of others. economic resources.

7. Economic theory and practice widely use the concept of marginal (marginal) values, which are understood as an increase in one value caused by an increase in another value per unit (provided that all other values ​​remain unchanged). They talk about marginal cost, marginal income, marginal utility. The limit value concept is based primarily on two ideas. First, at a certain stage, the costs of producing a good (production costs) begin to grow faster than the production of this good itself. Second, the more abundant the good, the less it is valued.

8. Economic efficiency is getting the maximum possible benefits from available resources. To do this, you need to constantly correlate benefits (benefits) and costs (costs), or, to put it another way, behave rationally. Rational behavior means that the producer and consumer of goods strive for the highest efficiency and for this they maximize benefits and minimize costs. Efficiency is calculated in various ways.

9. The division of production between different workers, enterprises and their divisions, industries, regions of the country, as well as between countries is called the division of labor. Accordingly, a distinction is made between professional, interfirm and intrafactory, interbranch, interregional and international division of labor. Based on the division of labor, the orientation of manufacturers towards the manufacture of individual products and their elements is called specialization.

Terms and concepts
Economic benefits
Economic needs
Goods and services (goods)
Essential products
Engel's law
Economic resources
Interchangeability (alternativeness) of economic resources
Manufacturing capabilities
Alternative (imputed) value (costs)
The Law of Increasing Opportunity Costs
The law of diminishing returns
Economic efficiency
Pareto efficiency (Pareto optimum)
Division of labor
Specialization

Self-test questions

1. How is the law (principle) of raising needs formulated?

2. List the economic resources known to you.

3. What are the consequences of the combination of unlimited needs and limited resources?

4. What gives an entrepreneur such a property of economic resources as their interchangeability (alternative)?

5. Explain what the production capability curve demonstrates?

6. What are the similarities and differences between the law of increasing opportunity costs and the law of diminishing returns?

7. Where in business life, in your opinion, can the ideas of marginalism be used?

8. What cost-effectiveness indicators do you know and how are they calculated?

9. What is the difference between firm and national economic efficiency?

10. Prove that specialization is related to the division of labor.

Needs- This is an expression of the need for something necessary to maintain the life and development of the individual and society as a whole. It is the needs that motivate people to production, to economic activity.

Needs are shaped by numerous factors. The needs are influenced by the biological nature of a person, his spiritual world, the socio-economic conditions of his life, scientific and technological progress, natural and climatic environment, etc.

There are many options for grouping, classifying needs. You can highlight the needs:

− primary(the need for livelihoods that cannot be replaced by anything - food, clothing, shelter) and secondary(needs of choice - cars, entertainment, travel);

− material(in food) and spiritual(in reading books);

− personal(education) and public(country's defense, environmental protection).

When characterizing needs and assigning them to a particular group, one must bear in mind the conditional (relative) nature of a particular grouping. The boundaries between types of needs are rather fluid.

For example, in highly developed countries the need for the ability to read and write refers to primary needs, and in backward countries - to secondary needs.

The classification of needs developed by the American scientist A. Maslow is widely known. In the system he proposed, all needs are presented in the form of a pyramid, at the base of which are physiological needs. The spiritual needs of man rise above them (Fig. 3.1 Pyramid of needs of A. Maslow).

According to A. Maslow, the first two lower groups of needs are the needs of the lower order, and until they are satisfied, the needs of the higher order are irrelevant (the three upper groups of needs).

As society develops, people's needs are constantly expanding and becoming more complex, while the share of spiritual, intellectual needs increases.

The increase in needs creates a constant incentive for productive work.

The needs of people are met with the help of goods.

Good Is everything that is useful for a person and satisfies his needs. Benefits can have a material form (material object) or act as a service. A service is an intangible benefit in the form of activities useful to people. Services cannot be accumulated, since the processes of their creation and consumption coincide.

All the benefits with the help of which a person satisfies his needs are subdivided into limitless- the free blessings of nature and limited (economic), most of which are created during the production process.

Economic benefits limited- it means that:

- they are not enough to satisfy of all the needs of people;

- the volume of goods can be increased only through the cost of production factors;

- goods have to be distributed in one way or another.

Economic benefits fall into two broad groups:

− consumer goods that directly satisfy the needs of people (food, clothing, housing, etc.);

− means of production- goods of an industrial nature that satisfy the needs of people indirectly (machine tools, machinery, equipment, minerals).

Many economic benefits are interconnected: they can either replace each other or complement each other. In this regard, a distinction is made between:

− interchangeable goods(goods-substitutes) - goods that have the ability to satisfy needs at the expense of each other (oil - gas, margarine - oil, wood - brick, etc.) In this case, interchangeability can be complete (absolute), when one good can completely replace other (ballpoint - capillary pen; sweets - sugar - jam, etc.), and relative, when goods can be more or less equal to each other (natural and artificial fabrics, roses and carnations, gasoline or fuel oil);

− complementary(complimentary) benefits- goods that satisfy the needs of people only in combination with each other (tape recorder and cassette, camera and film, car and gasoline, etc.). Complementarity can be rigid (absolute) and relative. In the first case, one good must correspond to a certain amount of another good (tape recorder - cassette), in the second, there is no such strict certainty (coffee and sugar, shirt and tie).

Understanding the complementarity and interchangeability of goods is of great importance for analyzing the behavior of business entities and the patterns of pricing in a market economy.

All people have different needs. They can be divided into two parts: spiritual and material needs. Although this division is conditional (for example, it is difficult to say whether a person's need for knowledge belongs to spiritual or material needs), however, for the most part it is possible.

The concept of economic needs and benefits

Material needs can be called economic needs. They are expressed in the fact that we want various economic benefits. In turn, economic benefits are tangible and intangible items, more precisely, the properties of these items that can satisfy economic needs. Economic needs are one of the fundamental categories in economic theory.

At the dawn of mankind, people satisfied economic needs at the expense of the ready-made goods of nature. Subsequently, the vast majority of needs began to be satisfied through the production of goods. In a market economy, where economic goods are bought and sold, they are called goods and services (often just goods, products, products).

Humanity is arranged in such a way that its economic needs usually exceed the possibilities of producing goods. They even talk about the law (principle) of raising needs, which means that needs grow faster than the production of goods. This is largely because as some needs are satisfied, others immediately arise.

So, in a traditional society, most of its members experience needs primarily in essential products. These are the needs mainly for food, clothing, housing, and basic services. However, even in the nineteenth century. Prussian statistician Ernest Engel proved that there is a direct relationship between the type of goods and services purchased and the income level of consumers. According to his statements, confirmed by practice, with an increase in the absolute size of income, the share spent on essential goods and services decreases, and the share of expenses on less essential products increases. The very first need, moreover a daily one, is the need for food. So Engel's law finds expression in the fact that with an increase in income, their share going to the purchase of food decreases, and that part of income that is spent on the purchase of other goods (especially services), which is products that are not essential.

Ultimately we come to the conclusion that if the growth of economic needs constantly outstrips the production of economic goods, then these needs are insatiable to the end, unlimited.

Another conclusion is that economic benefits are limited (rare, in the terminology of economic theory), i.e. fewer needs for them. This limitation is due to the fact that the production of economic benefits is faced with limited reserves of many natural resources, frequent shortages of labor (especially qualified), insufficient production capacity and finance, cases of poor organization of production, lack of technology and other knowledge for the production of a particular good. In other words, the production of economic goods lags behind economic needs due to limited economic resources.