5. Find synonyms and antonyms (if any) to the words given.

identical	profit	productive
work	producer	gain
efficient	additional	buyer
loss	rare	to teach
quantity	to idle	usual
expensive	leisure	the same
manufacturer	inefficient	vender
customer	volume	job
extra	client	to work
to train	to instruct	cheap
to perform	to do	different
frequent	dear	amount
sell	buyer	manufacturer
machines	permanent	company
volume	equipment	productive
firm	expenditure	expense
type	temporal	fast
owner	inefficient	slow
seller	commodity	amount
constant	goods	organization
dealer	kind	purchase
quick	proprietor	acquire
cost	sort	vender
efficient	buy	trade

III. Business organisation

The term "production" is used in economics to refer to the provision of goods and services for the satisfaction of any need or want regardless of the desirability or otherwise of such provision. So the manufacture of cigarettes, undesirable from the point of view of health hazards and the services provided by a betting shop are to be counted just as much production as is the provision of houses and clothes. The economist, as such, must not be concerned with judging other people's wants and desires.

The Firm

The firm is the production unit in which decisions are made as to what goods and services to produce, with which resources and techniques, in what quantities and qualities, and in which location. The firm is a transformation system, taking certain resources or inputs and transforming or processing them into a particular output, as depicted in exhibit 1. In that diagram is shown a firm transforming four inputs. In practice, of course, the actual number of inputs will tend to vary between firms; one firm may use a single raw material, another may use several, whilst yet another, such as a car manufacturer, may purchase dozens of components from suppliers. Also inputs of manpower and machinery will vary in a similar fashion. Again, although we have shown a single-product firm, many firms are multi-product units making a range of articles rather than one.

The relationship between inputs and output will be a technical one determined by the firm's production function. The production function states the output that will be obtainable from every possible combination of inputs and will take the form Q_x=f(R, S, T) where Q_x is the output of X per period and R, S and T are the inputs over the same period.

The firm is a link between two markets - the market for inputs or factors of production in which it is probably competing with other firms for supplies and the market for its product(s) where it is probably facing competition from other firms in the same industry. This situation is illustrated in Exhibit 2.

We next describe the main types of business organisation to be found in the United Kingdom economy.