Explanation of Economic Terms

1. What are syn. to the word illicit payment?
Illicit - not allowed by laws or rules, or strongly disapproved of by society
Defendant - the person in a court of law who has been accused (accuse) of doing something illegal
Illicit=illegal, unlawful, unlicensed, illegitimate.
2. What does it mean ethical investment?
Investors are more and more concerned about where their money is invested. Many companies take ethical investment very seriously, because it can affect the company’s reputation and they didn’t want to damage their reputation for ethical investment.
Companies don’t invest, for example, in arms companies or tobacco firms. Environmental or green issues are also very important.
3. Why should companies be ethical or what are the advantages of a company in behaving ethically?
Company should be ethical, because companies are made up of people. Multinationals are made up of many different nationalities. Companies are part of society and as such they should reflect society standarts.
Companies, especially multinational ones, do have responsibilities in the world and should try to be positive influence and if a company is not ethical, then it will not survive as a company.
4. Should companies have a code of ethics?
Code of ethics is useful because it makes a commitment to certain good behaviour and so it’s a way of communicating the importance of good behaviour to all of it’s employees and partners. And if a company has a code of ethics and spends time communicating it, it does actually contribute to it’s ethical behaviour.
5. What is facilitation payment?
Facilitation payments are part of doing business in many countries, and bribes are something which most companies are not going to want to get involved in.
6. When does a facilitation payment become a bribe?
Facilitation payments become a bribe when they are out of proportion to the kind of business that you are expecting to win.
7. Can you mention any unethical activities? Are any common in your country?
Ethics are moral beliefs about what is right and wrong, and the study of this. Some actions are not criminal, but they are morally wrong: unethical. Areas where choices have to be made about right and wrong behaviour are ethical issues. Some organizations have a code of ethics or code of conduct where they say what managers’ and employees’ behaviour should be, to try to prevent them behaving unethically.
8. What is price fixing?
That means that each can maintain a reasonable profit margin.
A system in which the government sets the prices of things.
An agreement between producers and sellers of a product to fix its price at a high level.

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