Economics cannot be studied without knowledgecertain category apparatus. One of the fundamental categories of this science is economic good. In this article we will give the definition of this term, as well as describe the different types of benefits.
We live in a world of needs, and these needslimitless - as soon as a person satisfies some, immediately others appear of a higher level. In the broad sense of the word, a blessing is something that can satisfy the needs of a person of any kind: physiological, moral, mental, and so on. Since the economy explores the issues of exchange, the economic good is a good that can be exchanged for another good for mutually beneficial conditions for the counterparties. If there is a possibility of exchange, then there is a certain price set under the influence of supply and demand. Based on the foregoing, it is possible to give the following definition: economic benefits are any objects, processes, phenomena that can satisfy a particular human need, freely or limitedly exchanged in the market. An important characteristic is also the limited wealth in comparison with human needs.
Surely many readers will now ask the question:What is the economic benefit different from the usual? The answer is: it’s all about the possibility of exchanging good for other benefits. Thus, a person cannot receive an economic benefit for free - he must definitely give something in return. Note that along with economic, there are also free goods, such as sunlight, which satisfies the need for light and heat, or air, which makes it possible to breathe. According to the definition, the supply of these goods is so great that the equilibrium price becomes equal to zero. For example, an interesting situation occurs with water: being by nature a free blessing (in order to get drunk from a river, you don’t have to pay anything), after purification, chlorination, filtration and water supply it becomes an economic boon. We also note that not everything that goes for free is free: for example, a movie downloaded by a user via a torrent tracker goes to him for free, but formally it is subject to the exclusive copyright of the creator, and can officially be distributed only for money.
Поскольку понятие «экономическое благо» включает in itself a virtually unlimited list of all kinds of goods, services and products of intellectual property, it is accepted to classify them in some way. Classification, if possible, of revealing value implies the division of economic benefits into benefits of explicit value (which is visible even before purchase), benefits of hidden value (which can be determined only by purchasing goods), and benefits of trust, the value of which appears only some time after purchase and use. So, any vegetable or fruit can be a blessing of obvious value - its appearance can determine its quality even before purchase. An example of a blessing with a hidden value is the box of chocolates - until we paid for its cost and discovered it, we cannot determine the quality and value of its contents. A typical benefit of trust is drugs, whose effect is manifested only after undergoing a course of treatment. Also, economic benefits are classified by participation in the consumer basket, as well as the dependence of their consumption on the price level and the income of the buyer. According to this classification distinguish the benefits of basic necessities, ordinary and status benefits.
As you can see, the economic good is athe object of economics itself. Thus, the classical wording “..production, exchange and consumption of goods, services and ideas” can be replaced by “... production, exchange and consumption of economic benefits”.
