The total amount of money owed by an individual, company or other organization to banks or other lenders is their debt. It represents the accumulated total of past borrowing. When it is owed by government, it is called public debt, and it represents the accumulation of past budget deficits.

When a government, business, or household spends more in a given period of time than they generate in income, they incur a deficit. A deficit must be financed with new borrowing, or by running down previous savings.

A decline in the overall average level of prices. Deflation is the opposite of inflation.

This represents the loss of value from an existing stock of real capital (for an individual company or for the whole economy), reflecting the normal wear-and-tear of machinery, equipment, and infrastructure. A company or country must invest continuously just to offset depreciation, or else its capital stock will gradually run down.

Economic development is the process through which a country’s economy expands and improves in both quantitative and qualitative terms. Economic development requires the coming together of several different processes and conditions. the accumulation of real capital; the development of education, skills, and human capacities; improvements in governance, democracy, and stability; and changes in the sectoral make-up of the economy.

As a result of racist and sexist attitudes, and deliberate efforts of employers to play off groups of workers against each other, different groups of people (defined and divided by gender, ethnicity, language, ability, or other factors) experience very different economic opportunities and incomes.

The distribution of income reflects the process by which the real output of goods and services produced by the economy is allocated to different individuals and groups of people. Distribution can be measured across individuals (comparing high-income and low-income households), or across classes (comparing the incomes of workers, small businesses, and capitalists).

Many companies pay a cash dividend (quarterly or annually) to the owners of its shares. This is an enticement to investors to purchase that company’s shares, and represents a way of distributing some of a company’s profits to its ultimate owners. Individual investors can capture profits in other ways, as well – such as through capital gains.