Index (economics) in the context of "Passively managed"

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⭐ Core Definition: Index (economics)

In economics, statistics, and finance, an index is a number that measures how a group of related data points—like prices, company performance, productivity, or employment—changes over time to track different aspects of economic health from various sources.

Consumer-focused indices include the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which shows how retail prices for goods and services shift in a fixed area, aiding adjustments to salaries, bond interest rates, and tax thresholds for inflation. The cost-of-living index (COLI) compares living expenses over time or across places. The Economist’s Big Mac Index uses a Big Mac’s cost to explore currency values and purchasing power.

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👉 Index (economics) in the context of Passively managed

Passive management (also called passive investing) is an investing strategy that tracks a market-weighted index or portfolio. Passive management is most common on the equity market, where index funds track a stock market index, but it is becoming more common in other investment types, including bonds, commodities and hedge funds. There has been a substantial increase in passive investing over the last twenty years.

The most popular method is to mimic the performance of an externally specified index by buying an index fund. By tracking an index, an investment portfolio typically gets good diversification, low turnover (good for keeping down internal transaction costs), and low management fees. With low fees, an investor in such a fund would have higher returns than a similar fund with similar investments but higher management fees and/or turnover/transaction costs.

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Index (economics) in the context of Real gross domestic product

Real gross domestic product (real GDP) is a macroeconomic measure of the value of economic output adjusted for price changes (i.e. inflation or deflation). This adjustment transforms the money-value measure, nominal GDP, into an index for quantity of total output. Although GDP is total output, it is primarily useful because it closely approximates the total spending: the sum of consumer spending, investment made by industry, excess of exports over imports, and government spending. Due to inflation, nominal GDP can increase even when physical output is fixed, and so does not actually reflect the true growth in an economy. That is why the GDP must be divided by the inflation rate (raised to the power of units of time in which the rate is measured) to get the growth of the real GDP. Different organizations use different types of 'Real GDP' measures, for example, the UNCTAD uses 2015 Constant prices and exchange rates while the FRED uses 2009 constant prices and exchange rates, and recently the World Bank switched from 2005 to 2010 constant prices and exchange rates.

Real GDP contrasts with real gross domestic income, which is adjusted for price changes with a different method.

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Index (economics) in the context of Arthur Cecil Pigou

Arthur Cecil Pigou (/ˈpɡ/; 18 November 1877 – 7 March 1959) was an English economist. As a teacher and builder of the School of Economics at the University of Cambridge, he trained and influenced many Cambridge economists who went on to take chairs of economics around the world. His work covered various fields of economics, particularly welfare economics, but also included business cycle theory, unemployment, public finance, index numbers, and measurement of national output. His reputation was affected adversely by influential economic writers who used his work as the basis on which to define their own opposing views. He reluctantly served on several public committees, including the Cunliffe Committee and the 1919 Royal Commission on income tax.

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Index (economics) in the context of Euronext

Euronext N.V. (short for European New Exchange Technology) is a European bourse that provides trading and post-trade services for a range of financial instruments. It is registered in Amsterdam but its operational headquarters are located in Paris. It operates major stock exchanges in eight countries: France (Euronext Paris), the Netherlands (Euronext Amsterdam), Belgium (Euronext Brussels), Ireland (Euronext Dublin), Portugal (Euronext Lisbon), Italy (Borsa Italiana), Greece (Athens Stock Exchange) and Norway (Euronext Oslo Børs). The present-day Euronext was spun off from the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) in 2014, shortly after ICE's acquisition of NYSE Euronext the year before.

Traded assets include regulated equities, exchange-traded funds (ETF), warrants and certificates, bonds, derivatives, commodities, foreign exchange as well as indices. As of March 2025, Euronext operated nearly 1,800 listed issuers with a market capitalization of approximately €6.3 trillion.

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Index (economics) in the context of Stock market index

In finance, a stock index, or stock market index, is an index that measures the performance of a stock market, or of a subset of a stock market. It helps investors compare current stock price levels with past prices to calculate market performance.

Two of the primary criteria of an index are that it is investable and transparent: The methods of its construction are specified. Investors may be able to invest in a stock market index by buying an index fund, which is structured as either a mutual fund or an exchange-traded fund, and "tracks" an index. The difference between an index fund's performance and the index, if any, is called tracking error.

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Index (economics) in the context of Housing affordability index

A housing affordability index (HAI) is an index that measures housing affordability, usually the degree to which the median person or family in a particular country or region can afford housing/housing-related costs.

Housing affordability is one contribution to the cost of living in an area; measured by the cost-of-living index.

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Index (economics) in the context of Irving Fisher

Irving Fisher (February 27, 1867 – April 29, 1947) was an American economist, statistician, inventor, eugenicist and progressive social campaigner. He was one of the earliest American neoclassical economists, though his later work on debt deflation has been embraced by the post-Keynesian school. Joseph Schumpeter described him as "the greatest economist the United States has ever produced", an assessment later repeated by James Tobin and Milton Friedman.

Fisher made important contributions to utility theory and general equilibrium. He was also a pioneer in the rigorous study of intertemporal choice in markets, which led him to develop a theory of capital and interest rates. His research on the quantity theory of money inaugurated the school of macroeconomic thought known as "monetarism". Fisher was also a pioneer of econometrics, including the development of index numbers. Some concepts named after him include the Fisher equation, the Fisher hypothesis, the international Fisher effect, the Fisher separation theorem and Fisher market.

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Index (economics) in the context of Big Mac Index

The Big Mac Index is a price index published since 1986 by The Economist as an informal way of measuring the purchasing power parity (PPP) between two currencies and providing a test of the extent to which market exchange rates result in goods costing the same in different countries. It "seeks to make exchange-rate theory a bit more digestible." The index compares the relative price worldwide to purchase the Big Mac, the flagship hamburger sold at McDonald's restaurants.

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