Glossary of Economics & Sustainability Terms

Absolute Advantage: A business’s or industry’s ability to produce a particular product or service more efficiently than any other business or industry in its economic space, or its ability to produce a better-quality product. Advantages result from using less labor per unit produced, from more efficient resource utilization, or from the unique factors of their environmental context.

Agile Manufacturing: The technical, social, and structural innovations employed by a manufacturer that allow it to produce a wide range of products in a production space. These innovations allow a manufacturer to quickly shift production runs to match changing customer demands. Also known as flexible manufacturing.

Agrivoltaics: The integration of agricultural production with solar voltaic panels in the same plot of land.

Antifragility: A property of self-regulating systems operating at several organizational levels, whereby the system’s ability to persist results from sufficient experience with stressors (i.e., volatility, disturbances, attacks, failures, and other social and environmental forces). A system with high antifragility allows it to survive future stressors with minimal to no degradation, while increasing its resistance to those same stressors.

Balanced Trade Pyramid: A conceptual representation of the production and distribution of goods and services, with productive industries representing the base of the pyramid (e.g., extractive industries, renewable energy, and waste-to-resources), contributing more to GDP than each successive tier above. In each tier of the triangle (e.g., manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, professional and government services) the relative contribution to GDP is lower than in the tier below. Foreign and carrying trades represent an ever-smaller portion of wealth accumulation at the top of the pyramid. A balanced trade triangle represents the importance of productive industries in sustaining regional and domestic economic growth.

Basic Operational Unit: The boundary of a self-regulating system, and the components nested within. Basic operational units include mitochondria, cells, organs, individuals, populations, businesses, industries, economies, ecosystems, and others.

Biological Diversity: Also known as biodiversity, this is a general term used to describe the number of species in an area, genetic diversity within a species, or other factors of diversity in an ecosystem. One common metric of biological diversity is to quantify the number of species existing in a landscape (i.e., richness) and their relative abundance in that landscape (i.e., evenness), such as in Shannon’s Diversity Index.

Biotic Pyramid: A conceptual representation of the trophic levels within an ecosystem, with primary producers and decomposers dominating the base, which constitute the greatest portion of total productivity. Several trophic levels of consumers exist in the tiers above. The quantity of biochemical energy in each trophic level is lower than that of the next lower trophic level.

Boundary Condition: In self-regulating systems, the defined limits of a system being studied, including all physical, social, or biological components within the system. A clear definition of a system’s boundary condition (e.g., cell, body, ecosystem, community, industry, regional economy) must exist prior to gaining an understanding of the system’s structure and functions, and the interactions between the system and the context in which it exists. The term “boundary condition” has various meanings in ecology, mathematics, physics, and other disciplines.

Bullwhip Effect: A phenomenon whereby small shifts in consumer demand produce an increasing magnitude of interruptions or volatility the further one travels “upstream” to affected distributors, manufacturers, and extractive industries at the opposite end. The term typically applies to long supply chains.

Capital: Any asset that can be owned and traded, including land, financial assets, machinery, buildings, equipment, primary energy, natural resources, and others. Labor is not considered capital. (Piketty, 2014)

Carrying Trade: Also known as the carry trade, the monetary activities of the global network of corporations, national governments, and transnational entities. The carrying trade includes not only the financing of global commodity markets, but various activities of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the global network of national banks. The carry trade also entails wagering on valuations of foreign currencies, investment in government bonds, and asset-backed securities.

Circularity: Also known as the circular economy, it is an economy that is regenerative, completely reliant upon renewable energy, and eliminates waste by design. Those designs include durability, recyclability, and other properties that increase the longevity, reuse, and recyclability of a product. A circular economy aims to resolve global issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource degradation.

Classical Capitalism: An epoch of global market expansion from about 1740 to 1930, whereby fossil fuels became a means to attaining higher levels of production with existing technology. Great Britain was the dominant hegemony in the first two-thirds of this epoch of capitalism, stemming in part from the abundant sources of easily accessible coal in England. The Industrial Revolution occurred during this epoch, which is why many refer to it as Industrial Capitalism.

Closed System: A non-living system (i.e., abiotic), which can include inert matter, machinery, buildings, computers, furniture, and so on. A closed system requires external instructions to operate, and cannot maintain an equilibrium state under a regime of shifting external conditions. A closed system is not self-regulating, and is susceptible to entropy. A closed system does not have the property of antifragility.

Coevolution: The concurrent evolution of two or more species (or business entities) in the same space, in which the adaptations of one entity influence the adaptations of one or more entities in that space. In economics, the evolution of electricity in the energy industry coevolved with shifts in manufacturing, such as the ability of auto manufacturers to increase production efficiencies via electric-powered assembly lines.

Comparative Advantage: The theory that a country or industry can gain economic or financial benefits via the specialization of goods or services in which it has an absolute advantage, relative to other countries or industries producing those same goods and services. To gain a comparative advantage requires that adequate quantities and qualities of energy, natural resources and labor be directed toward the industry in question. While this theory is often used to justify foreign trade, comparative advantages can also exist within domestic markets.

Competitive Advantage: The financial advantages a business or industry can gain within a niche by applying a unique combination of technology and labor (i.e., to yield greater efficiencies of production, or to produce a higher-quality product). Though consumers might benefit from a particular competitive advantage, the business which develops the advantage may not necessarily increase the quantity of products or services it renders. That is, an absolute advantage does not necessarily result from a competitive advantage.

Complexity-Persistence Principle: The notion that a self-regulating system can increase its chance of surviving an uncertain and volatile future by increasing the diversity of entities (e.g., species, businesses, communities, industries) within the system. The more complex a system, the longer it can persist absent resource or information transfers with adjacent homologous systems (i.e., systems with a comparable level of complexity).

Conservation: A wide range of policies, programs, and activities that minimize impacts to soil, water, air, native habitats, and other environmental resources. Conservation occurs in ecosystems in which humans are actively engaged with resource extraction and other socioeconomic activities. One example is selective logging to meet timber needs, in a manner that improves watershed health, increasing species diversity, reduces wildfire risk, contributes to food sovereignty, and generates renewable energy.

Constructive Competition: Competition between two or more businesses that increases resource-use efficiencies and financial efficiencies without degrading the social, environmental, or economic assets where business activities occur. Constructive competition tends to stimulate economic diversity within the affected industries.

Conventional Agriculture: Agricultural practices that require a high degree of exogenous inputs, regular tillage, and the use of other methods that tend to degrade soil fertility.

Convergence: In economics, a theory predicting that, as globalization proceeds, investment will naturally flow from wealthy countries to poorer countries, where a higher return on investment can be earned. In the process, capital will reach an equilibrium between rich and poor nations.

Convergent Evolution: A process whereby relatively unrelated organisms, existing in geographically distinct habitats, develop similar features or behaviors in response to similar environmental pressures. One example is the development of flight in insects, birds, and mammals (e.g., bats) in tropical, temperate, and desert ecosystems across the globe.

Decision Certainty: A condition whereby a consumer’s confidence to make purchasing and other business decisions is increased, due to increased certainty of information across a supply chain. Shorter supply chains, coupled with more accurate information along a supply chain, contributes to decision certainty, which engenders resource-use efficiency.

Decision Insecurity: A condition whereby a consumer’s confidence to make purchasing and other business decisions is impaired due to uncertain or incomplete information along a supply chain. Insecurity can arise from long or complex supply chains, or when a greater number of threats exist along a supply chain, which can lead to increased material and financial waste.

Destructive Competition: Competition between two or more business entities that results in resource-use or financial inefficiencies, or which degrades the social, environmental, or economic assets in areas where business activities occur. Destructive competition tends to decrease economic diversity within the affected industry.

Disruptive Technology: Technological change that renders the previous technologies or business structures obsolete, or which puts those technologies and business structures at a competitive disadvantage.

Domestic Trade: Exchange of goods and services within a nation, state, or region. Also known as the home trade.

Dynamic Equilibrium: A relatively stable condition in which resources are most efficiently distributed throughout the system, and where resistance to disturbance is relatively high. Ecosystem processes are in balance at a landscape level. Predator and prey populations may rise and fall over time, but system-wide diversity—on average—remains relatively stable.

Ecological Clustering: A form of industrial cooperation oriented toward resource-use efficiency, waste reduction, materials reuse, and other environmental conservation outcomes. Typically, clusters of resource-compatible businesses are co-located in a geographically distinct area, such as an industrial zone of a city or region.

Economic Diversity: A metric that accounts for the number (i.e., richness) and distribution (i.e., evenness) of businesses in an economic space.

Economic Restoration: The process of rebuilding economic diversity, domestic trade, and endogenous energy systems within regional and domestic economies.

Economic sovereignty: A nation’s ability to superintend its economic system, safeguarding not only the state’s economy but also its political reign, and its cultural and traditional identity, as a nation-state in the world.

Economies of Scale: The financial advantages gained as a company increases its production quantities (relative to its operational costs), leading to a lower average cost per unit produced.

Emergent Property: A property not possessed by any of the system’s component parts, but which emerges when various components become arranged and interconnected in a novel fashion. The emergent properties of water (e.g., its specific heat, the unique properties of its liquid or solid phase) are not possessed by either hydrogen or oxygen.

Endogenous Energy: Renewable energy (economics) or biochemical energy (ecology) that is consumed by entities in the same boundary in which it is generated. Renewable energy generated in Colorado and consumed in New Mexico is not endogenous to New Mexico.

Energy Neutrality: A condition whereby the total quantity of energy consumed by a business, home, industry, or economy is met by endogenous energy produced in that same business, home, industry, or economic space.

Energy Security: A state in which the quantity of commercially available energy (i.e., primary energy and its derivatives) in a region or nation adequately meets consumer demands in that same economic space. The greater a region’s reliance on forms of energy (e.g., fossil fuels) and modes of production (e.g., large-scale wind farm tied to national and international grids) that are influenced by global and national markets, the less energy security they possess. Energy security requires reliable local energy distribution systems and an adequate diversity of renewable energy technologies to supply those systems.

Energy Sovereignty: A condition whereby residents and businesses in a region have the freedom to consume the quantity of energy they require to sustain personal and economic needs, into perpetuity. Energy supplies are under the autonomous control of entities within the economy in question.

Epigenetic Memory: A species’ traits that originate in the genetic level, and which can produce a variety of different physical or behavioral expressions when exposed to specific environmental factors. This can include a human’s fear of snakes or spiders, or a predilection for lofty views over verdant valleys, or a newborn’s instinct to hold its breath when submerged.

Exogenous Energy: Energy that is produced by one ecosystem or economy, then transferred to a homologous system (e.g., another economy) for consumption. One example is fossil fuels, created hundreds of millions of years ago by ecosystems that are now extinct, and typically transferred to regions far beyond the point of extraction. Electricity generated by nuclear power plants in France, and then transported to Italy for consumption, is exogenous to the Italian economy.

Externalities: A concept stemming from the work of Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto in the waning days of the Industrial Revolution. Externalities result when a product cannot be produced, delivered, or disposed of without making one or more individuals or their environment worse off. In theory, externalities can also be positive, at least in the short term.

Food Desert: An area in which residents have poor access to the foods required for a healthy and culturally fulfilled life. Food deserts materialize due to low income, or when long distances exist between customers and retailers of the foods in question.

Food Security: A temporary condition whereby individuals have reliable access to sufficient, safe, nutritious, and culturally relevant food, to the extent that normal growth and development can be attained. Typical definitions of food security do not address agricultural sustainability, the security of political and ecological systems in areas where food is sourced, or the security of energy and/or water resources in regions where food is sourced.

Food Sovereignty: A self-sustaining condition whereby a network of consumers and producers have the autonomy to grow, distribute, and consume food that is sufficient to support a healthy and culturally relevant lifestyle. Food sovereignty requires sustainable or regenerative agricultural methods, with food production, distribution, and consumption decisions entirely influenced by the social, environmental, and economic (SEI) context in which producers and consumers exist, rather than by the food production, distribution, and consumption decisions of other nations and regions. Food sovereignty requires local autonomy over adequate sources of energy, water, and other inputs required to grow food.

Foreign Trade: Exchange of goods and services across national borders.

Foundational Components: The components of an ecosystem or economy that are most responsible for maintaining system properties such as net productivity, resilience, resistance, and so on, or for maintaining a state of dynamic equilibrium in the presence of variable environmental conditions in which the system evolved. The dynamic interaction of a system’s foundational components, and the proper balance between those components, is responsible for maintaining the system in a self-regulating state.

Free Economic Zone: A regional economy that is largely self-sustaining (i.e., self-reliant), attributed to reliance on endogenous energy and domestic trade, which requires adequate levels of economic diversity. The self-sustaining state increases the system’s resistance and resilience to social, environmental, and economic forces beyond its border. A free economic zone is smaller than most national and state boundaries.

Functional Diversity: An aspect of diversity whereby species or businesses in multiple tiers of production, consumption, and decomposition (i.e., trophic levels, sectors, industries) exist in the same ecological or economic space. An economy that harbors businesses in extraction, manufacturing, recycling, and service sectors has high functional diversity.

Functional Redundancy: An aspect of diversity whereby two or more entities (i.e., businesses, species) exist in the same niche.

Fundamental Niche: The geographic distribution of a species based on the presence of environmental conditions that favor its growth and reproduction. The optimal environment for a given species, before taking into consideration limiting factors such as competition with other species in that niche, predator-prey interactions, and similar factors.

Geographic Isolation: A condition whereby one population is physically separated from another (e.g., by an ocean, mountain range, or an expansive desert), so that evolution will act on the isolated population with minimal genetic intrusion from species that exist beyond the physical barrier.

Global Market Capitalism: A phase in the evolution of capitalism that began in the 1970s, in which a network of central banks and multilateral trade agreements play a critical role in facilitating the exchange of goods and services between nations. The United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Group of 20 (G20), and the World Trade Organization are key entities in the global control of money and capital. Together, these institutions comprise the transnational state, tasked with combating the volatile nature of a global market economy.

Green Revolution: A period of significant technical change in the use of hybrid crops, an increased use of pesticides and herbicides, and fossil fuel-dependent fertilizers to stimulate a system of commodity foods, most of which rely on monoculture production systems.

Gross Domestic Productivity: The financial value of all goods produced and services rendered within a regional, state, provincial, or national economy within a specific time period.

Gross Domestic Productivity, Per Capita, Unit Energy Basis: GDP after accounting for population and total energy consumption.

Homeostasis: A biophysical condition required for a species to maintain a relatively stable internal state, regardless of changing environmental forces. A species’ survival requires it maintain homeostasis.

Homologous System: In biology, economics, and sociology, two or more self-regulating systems that embody comparable levels of complexity, each containing a functionally-equivalent components. For example, primates and pigs are homologous due to the presence of functionally similar organ systems. A tree and an insect are not homologous systems.

Import Substitution: The process of developing a local or domestic product to replace a similar product that is being imported.

Industrial Clustering: A strategy that facilitates sharing resources across a group of similar businesses within a region (e.g., multiple bicycle manufacturers in a state or province). Cost reductions are derived from collective local or regional resources, specialized labor, and other efficiencies. In return, participants can more efficiently reach a broader market while producing the benefits of cooperation, such as resource-use efficiency. Knowledge flows freely within a cluster, benefiting the whole while concurrently benefiting each participant. An example is the leather cluster centered around Florence, Italy.

Industrial Revolution: A period of significant advancement in the capacity of industry to achieve large scales of production for global markets. Historians believe the revolution began in Ironbridge, UK, when Abraham Darby the 1st developed an economical means to smelt iron from coal. Estimated time periods of the Industrial Revolution vary widely, but it occurred approximately between 1750 and 1900, a distinct period within Classical Capitalism.

Irrational Exuberance: A term coined by Alan Greenspan during the dot-com bubble of the 1990s to explain the overvaluation of technology assets, which he believed would eventually become subject to a prolonged market contraction. Irrational exuberance is a behavioral phenomenon, unfounded market optimism that lacks a real foundation of value. That optimism relies instead on psychological factors.

Just-in-Time Inventory: A manufacturing system created by the Japanese whereby inventory processes, staffing, factory designs, and other elements are designed so that raw materials and parts arrive into a factory, or on the factory floor, precisely when they are needed. This translates to more units produced with less capital.

Keynesian Capitalism: The epoch of capitalism spanning from about 1940 to 1970, stemming from the work of John M. Keynes. Dominant philosophies included low interest rates and easy credit, to stimulate consumer spending and related industrial production. Keynes also advocated for direct government actions to stabilize economies following the Great Depression.

Laissez-faire Economic Policies: Policies promoted by Adam Smith and others, arguing for free markets. Under such policies, government actions that interfere in trade or other natural business processes are condemned.

Mercantile Capitalism: Also referred to as mercantilism, this was the initial epoch of capitalism, enduring from approximately 1340 to 1740. Control over capital was transferred from the Northern Italian City-States to the Dutch during this epoch. Some historians describe mercantilism as a nationalist economic policy designed to maximize exports from an economy while minimizing imports.

Monoculture: An agricultural landscape dominated by a single species, such as corn or wheat. The scale of a monoculture can vary from less than one acre to tens of thousands of acres. Near monocultures can also exist in nature, especially where resources are concentrated (e.g., a cattail community in a wetland). Suppression of disturbance (e.g., suppressing wildfire) can also lead to a monoculture of trees in some forest regions.

Negative Feedback Loop: Also called a balancing loop. An involuntary response to external stimuli, necessary to bring an unbalanced system back into balance and maintain a relatively stable state. Feedback loops occur at many organizational levels, from individual cells to the biosphere. A mammal’s homeostasis is maintained through a variety of negative feedback loops, such as when high levels of carbon dioxide build up in the bloodstream; this triggers faster breathing to quickly remove carbon dioxide from the body.

Net Primary Productivity: In ecology, system-wide productivity after accounting for system maintenance, such as the energy consumed in metabolic processes that sustain growth and maintenance. Net primary productivity is lower than gross primary productivity.

Net Domestic Product, True: In economics, productivity of the system after accounting for the depreciation of capital assets, social assets, and ecological assets. At a given level of gross domestic productivity, NDP increases with the efficient use of resources.

No-till Farming: Seeding methods that do not require disking or tilling the soil. These methods are designed to rebuild soil organic matter, and are typically integrated with cover cropping, crop rotation, and a variety of rotational grazing systems. A primary goal is to rebuild the soil’s capacity to receive and hold rainwater and nutrients, reducing the cost of irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides, and energy.

Planned Product Obsolescence: The practice of designing a product such that it will fail quickly. The sooner a product fails, the sooner another unit can be sold to the same customer.

Positive Feedback Loop: Also called a reinforcing loop. An involuntary response to natural stimuli that produces an amplifying effect. One example is milk production in a nursing mother, essential to the survival of mammals. As the baby suckles from its mother’s breast, her body’s endocrine system releases a chemical signal, stimulating more milk production.

Preservation: Policies, programs, and actions intended to eliminate adverse human impacts to ecosystems, to maintain those systems in a pristine state.

Productive Capacity: The ability of an entity (e.g., nation, region, industry, or business) to produce goods and services now and in the future. An entity can raise or lower its productive capacity by manipulating factors such as the quantity and skill of workers, entrepreneurship, natural and economic resources, and technology. At a given level of GDP, an economy’s productive capacity increases with the efficient use of resources.

Productive Competition: Interactions between two businesses or industries whereby the financial and/or resource-use efficiency of either (or both) entities is improved. Productive competition tends to maintain or increase profits, productive capacity, economic diversity, and net productivity of an economy without degrading the social, environmental, or economic assets where business activities occur.

Quality of Life: As defined by the World Health Organization, an individual’s perception of their position in life, in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live, and in relation to their goals.

Real Wages: The value of an individual’s income after accounting for inflation. It is an estimate of purchasing power.

Realized Niche: The potential distribution of a species when accounting for the realities of competition, predation, and other ecological constraints. A species’ realized niche is narrower than its fundamental niche.

Recirculation Value of Money: The portion of financial wealth that remains within a local economy, relative to the total value of goods and services purchased. Recirculation value increases when purchases are made at local businesses, compared to purchases made at chain stores.

Reproductive Isolation: An evolutionary mechanism that restricts gene flow between two or more similar species, often resulting from behavioral, physiological, and other non-geographic conditions that restrict interbreeding between those species, though they occupy the same ecological space.

Safety Stock: The practice of securing more product than what consumers demand, due to uncertainty of supply or demand conditions. Safety stock tends to increase with long supply chains, and can lead to financial and resource-use inefficiencies.

Second-Moment Shock: A behavioral phenomenon following an uncertainty shock, whereby heightened uncertainty leads to steep declines in product demand. A second-moment shock typically leads to reduced hiring, lower investment, and a restriction of other organizational actions that can lead to a decline in productivity.

Self-Regulating: In biology, sociology, and economics, a condition whereby external instructions are not required for the system to maintain a dynamic equilibrium. Self-regulating entities are capable of self-maintenance (i.e., self-repair or self-reorganization following damage or disturbance).

Self-Reliance, Economic: An individual’s ability to garner and hold economic resources in excess of their basic needs. (Godfrey, 2008)

Species Richness: The total number of species existing in an ecological space.

Stability: An emergent property of complex self-regulating systems that accounts for the coupling of resistance (to disturbance) and resilience (following disturbance).

Standard of Living: A self-defined value, SOL is the aggregate value of goods and services available in the community in which one lives, including material comforts as well as a variety of public and private services.

Steady-State Economy: One that seeks an equilibrium between productivity and population growth, and can thrive amid mild economic fluctuations.(Daly, 1991) Through efficient use of energy, labor, and other resources, a steady-state economy can maintain higher levels of production from a fixed quantity and diversity of resources (i.e., endogenous resources), compared with an economy in a state of disequilibrium.

Structural Diversity, Ecological: A form of diversity whereby a particular functional group (e.g., the plant community of a forest) harbors species from multiple canopy strata in the same ecological space. For instance, a forest containing a variety of upper canopy trees, lower canopy trees, shrubs, and low-lying herbaceous plants in the same patch of land has high structural diversity. A forest cleared of its upper canopy trees and shrubs has lower structural diversity.

Structural Diversity, Economic: A form of diversity whereby a particular industry (e.g., clothing retailers, food manufacturing) harbors businesses with different scales of operation in the same economic space. For example, the lumber industry of a region that harbors a mix of large-, medium-, and small-scale businesses would have higher structural diversity than one harboring just a single large business.

Sustainability refers to the ability of a community, region, or nation to meet its economic and social needs into perpetuity, without jeopardizing the ability of other communities or nations to meet their needs, and without impairing the health of ecosystems we rely upon. The terms self-regulating and sustainable are used interchangeably herein, for a self-regulating economy cannot, by definition, exist via continual external resource inputs from beyond its boundary. Nor can a self-regulating (sustainable) economy persist from activities that continually degrade the social and environmental resources required for its survival. Refer to our Eco-Nomic Insights article on Redefining Sustainability for a Turbulent 21^st Century for a few conventional definitions and approaches to sustainability, and how sustainability needs to substantially shift (in our opinion) to sustain humanity’s social, environmental, and economic needs in this turbulent century.

Sustainable Advantages: The benefits gained by a businesses or industry that applies innovation to increase the efficient use of local resources (i.e., endogenous resources), while minimizing externalities of production. A sustainable advantage can be enhanced via productive competition and collaboration among businesses within a region, and when the collective action of consumers in that region succeeds to minimize the potentially negative impacts of production.

Sustainable Farming: Practices that make the best use of environmental goods and services without damaging those assets. (Pretty, 2008) Also known as sustainable agriculture.

Surplus Value: The result of operational structures, processes, and strategies that yield more capital than what is consumed during the production process. Surplus value can result from the skill of labor, as well as innovations and processes that utilize labor and non-labor resources more efficiently.

Symbiosis: A biological bond between two species that enables each to expend less energy by working together. Honeybees, apple trees, and humans form a three-way symbiosis.

Technology Spillover Effect: A phenomenon whereby the technical means and knowledge that create advantages in one industry (e.g., shipbuilding in Detroit, Michigan, USA) “spill over” to other industries, leading to innovation and productivity growth in the receiving industries, such as automobile and bicycle manufacturing.

Trade Balloon: An economic condition whereby less than 50 percent of GDP is comprised of manufacturing, extractive, and/or recycled product industries (e.g., agriculture, renewable energy, logging, recycled steel), and an increasing portion of GDP is generated by service, entertainment, technology, government, and other non-productive industries. In nations, states, or regions with a trade balloon, there tends to be increased reliance on foreign trade, carrying trade, and/or exogenous energy to support GDP, and less reliance on domestic trade and endogenous energy. A trade balloon can persist only as long as global energy markets, costs of foreign goods, and supply chains remain financially efficient and adequately stable.

Trophic Levels: In ecology, the various consumer and producer groups that exist in an ecosystem, including primary producers (e.g., vascular plants), decomposers (e.g., fungi), primary consumers (e.g., bees), secondary consumers (e.g., frogs), tertiary consumers (e.g., snakes), and top predators (e.g., hawks). In a highly functional ecosystem, each trophic level is comprised of multiple species.

Uncertainty Shock: Sudden productivity declines at the level of business, industry, or an economy in response to major exogenous shocks. Uncertainty shocks in the USA have included the Cuban Missile crisis, the assassination of JFK, the OPEC I oil-price shock, and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. (Bloom, 2009)

Washington Consensus: A series of trade policies facilitated by the United States of America following the 1970s recession, with the aim to increase trade liberation at a global scale, deemed necessary for economic growth in the United States and its trading partners.

Watershed: A geographical area within which all water flows by force of gravity through a network of natural drainages to a common river course. Nearly all free-flowing rivers (e.g., those that are not impounded by a dam) flow to a sea, gulf, or ocean, except for those draining into subterranean basins by means of porous substrates in which they exist. Watersheds exist in a nested fashion, whereby the largest watershed unit (e.g., Columbia River Watershed) is comprised of smaller watersheds (e.g., Yakima River Watershed), which is comprised of smaller and smaller watersheds as each additional tributary is joined by a subsequently smaller tributary.