Production (economics)

Production is a process of workers combining various material inputs and immaterial inputs (plans, know-how) in order to make something for consumption (the output). It is the act of creating output, a good or service which has value and contributes to the utility of individuals.

Economic well-being is created in a production process, meaning all economic activities that aim directly or indirectly to satisfy human wants and needs. The degree to which the needs are satisfied is often accepted as a measure of economic well-being. In production there are two features which explain increasing economic well-being. They are improving quality-price-ratio of goods and services and increasing incomes from growing and more efficient market production.

The most important forms of production are

In order to understand the origin of the economic well-being we must understand these three production processes. All of them produce commodities which have value and contribute to well-being of individuals.

The satisfaction of needs originates from the use of the commodities which are produced. The need satisfaction increases when the quality-price-ratio of the commodities improves and more satisfaction is achieved at less cost. Improving the quality-price-ratio of commodities is to a producer an essential way to improve the competitiveness of products but this kind of gains distributed to customers cannot be measured with production data. Improving the competitiveness of products means often to the producer lower product prices and therefore losses in incomes which are to compensated with the growth of sales volume.

Economic well-being also increases due to the growth of incomes that are gained from the growing and more efficient market production. Market production is the only production form which creates and distributes incomes to stakeholders. Public production and household production are financed by the incomes generated in market production. Thus market production has a double role in creating well-being, i.e. the role of producing goods and services and the role of creating income. Because of this double role market production is the “primus motor” of economic well-being and therefore here under review.

In principle there are two main activities in an economy, production and consumption. Similarly there are two kinds of actors, producers and consumers. Well-being is made possible by efficient production and by the interaction between producers and consumers. In the interaction, consumers can be identified in two roles both of which generate well-being. Consumers can be both customers of the producers and suppliers to the producers. The customers’ well-being arises from the commodities they are buying and the suppliers’ well-being is related to the income they receive as compensation for the production inputs they have delivered to the producers.

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Wikipedia