What are factors of production? Provide an example of each of the four factors of production. Make sure your answer is written in complete sentences.
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Answer:
The economic inputs used to make a profit are called factors of production. According to traditional economic theory, there are four main factors of production: land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship.
Land
In its simplest form, land is the physical place where economic activity takes place. In our lemonade stand example, it could be the patch of lawn in front of your house. However, land also includes all the natural resources found on it.
Resources can include timber, water, oil, livestock, and so forth. So if you used real lemons from a tree in your yard to make that lemonade, you used part of the land. Land plays an important part in production because land itself and the resources on it are usually limited. Political regulations prevent a person from just going and claiming something for themselves, or there may not be enough for everyone to have. Also, many of the natural resources are nonrenewable, meaning that their amount is fixed, and they can't be used indefinitely. Thus, producers must carefully manage land and its resources.
Labor
It seems obvious, but things can't be produced unless someone makes them. Your lemonade won't make itself, and it won't sell itself if you aren't there to do it. Therefore, another important factor of production is labor. Labor represents all of the people that are available to transform resources into goods or services that can be purchased. This factor is somewhat flexible since different people can be allocated to produce different things. Nobody has to produce everything themselves. That would be impractical. It's also important that a labor force is well educated and well trained to ensure that they can produce goods at peak efficiency and quality.
Capital
Perhaps to get your lemonade stand up and running, you also needed money to make signs to advertise your delicious drink. You may also have used a small table to set up your pitcher and cups. Both of these things - money and equipment - are considered capital. More specifically, capital can be the money that companies use to buy resources, as well as the physical assets companies use when producing goods or services, such as factories and machinery.
Entrepreneurship as a Factor
Entrepreneurship is the secret sauce that combines all the other factors of production into a product or service for the consumer market. An example of entrepreneurship is the evolution of social media behemoth Facebook Inc. (FB). Mark Zuckerberg assumed the risk for the success or failure of his social media network when he began allocating time from his daily schedule towards that activity. At the time that he coded the minimum viable product himself, Zuckerberg’s labor was the only factor of production.