Capitalism
Economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.
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Laissez-faire
Economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies) deriving from special interest groups.
Although never practiced with full consistency, laissez-faire capitalism emerged in the mid-18th century and was further popularized by Adam Smith's book The Wealth of Nations.
State capitalism
Economic system in which the state undertakes business and commercial economic activity and where the means of production are nationalized as state-owned enterprises (including the processes of capital accumulation, centralized management and wage labor).
Marxist literature defines state capitalism as a social system combining capitalism with ownership or control by a state.
Free market
System in which the prices for goods and services are self-regulated by buyers and sellers negotiating in an open market without market coercions.
Although free markets are commonly associated with capitalism in contemporary usage and popular culture, free markets have also been components in some forms of market socialism.
Mixed economy
Variously defined as an economic system blending elements of a market economy with elements of a planned economy, markets with state interventionism, or private enterprise with public enterprise.
Another is that of active collaboration of capitalist and socialist visions.
Economic interventionism
Economic policy position favouring government intervention in the market process with the intention of correcting market failures and promoting the general welfare of the people.
Capitalist market economies that feature high degrees of state intervention are often referred to as a type of mixed economy.
State ownership
Ownership of an industry, asset, or enterprise by the state or a public body representing a community, as opposed to an individual or private party.
A state-owned enterprise is a commercial enterprise owned by a government entity in a capitalist market or mixed economy.
Economic planning
Resource allocation mechanism based on a computational procedure for solving a constrained maximization problem with an iterative process for obtaining its solution.
A distinction can be made between physical planning (as in pure socialism) and financial planning (as practiced by governments and private firms in capitalism).
Industrial Revolution
The transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840.
GDP per capita was broadly stable before the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the modern capitalist economy, while the Industrial Revolution began an era of per-capita economic growth in capitalist economies.
Private property
Legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental legal entities.
Private property is foundational to capitalism, an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production.
Political economy
Study of how economic and political systems are linked.
Political economy most commonly refers to interdisciplinary studies drawing upon economics, sociology and political science in explaining how political institutions, the political environment, and the economic system—capitalist, socialist, communist, or mixed—influence each other.