The fee for a transaction charged by an intermediary in a market, such as a bank in a foreign-exchange transaction. An international system of classification for goods that was once widely used for specifying tariffs. BTN Brussels Tariff Nomenclature Budget constraint 1. For a country, the condition that the value of exports equals the value of imports or, if capital flows are permitted, that exports minus imports equals the net capital outflow . It is equivalent to income from production equaling expenditure on goods plus net acquisition of foreign assets.
Building block See stumbling block .
A large quantity of a commodity held in storage to be used to stabilize the commodity's price. This is done by buying when the price is low and adding to the buffer stock, selling out of the buffer stock when the price is high, hoping to reduce the size of price fluctuations. See international commodity agreement . The pattern followed by macroeconommic variables, such as GDP and unemployment that rise and fall irregularly over time, relative to trend . There is some tendency for cyclical movements of large countries to cause similar movements in other countries with whom they trade.