Glossary
Economist Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential economist terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key economist vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in economist training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Causal inference
- Finding cause and effect.
- Cost-benefit analysis
- Comparing costs and benefits.
- CPI
- Consumer price index.
- Econometrics
- Statistics for economics.
- Elasticity
- Responsiveness to price.
- Externality
- Side effect on others.
- Fiscal policy
- Government taxing and spending.
- Forecast
- Predicted outcome.
- GDP
- Gross domestic product.
- Inflation
- Rising prices.
- Monetary policy
- Central bank actions.
- Recession
- Economic decline.
- Regression
- Measuring relationships.
- Supply and demand
- Market forces.
- Unemployment rate
- Share of labor force without jobs.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Economist practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Economist training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.