The opportunity cost of capital is the expected rate of return forgone by bypassing of other potential investment activities for a given capital. It is a rate of return that investors could earn in financial markets.
Famous quotes containing the words opportunity, cost and/or capital:
“Shears: You mean, you intend to uphold the letter of the law, no matter what it costs?
Colonel Nicholson: Without law, Commander, there is no civilization.
Shears: That’s just my point. Here, there is no civilization.
Colonel Nicholson: Then perhaps we have the opportunity to introduce it.”
—Michael Wilson (1914–1978)
“Mining today is an affair of mathematics, of finance, of the latest in engineering skill. Cautious men behind polished desks in San Francisco figure out in advance the amount of metal to a cubic yard, the number of yards washed a day, the cost of each operation. They have no need of grubstakes.”
—Merle Colby, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)