Traditionally, the production system is broken down into three main sectors (or 'branches'): the primary sector, which includes agriculture, mining, forestry and fishing; the secondary sector, which includes manufacturing industry and construction; the tertiary sector, which groups all the other activities, residually defined and corresponding to the service sectors.
In the tertiary sector there are two major classes of activity: 'market services', such as commerce, public businesses, transport, communications, credit, insurance, real estate services and to business, research, private health, personal and community services; non-market services, which include activities such as education, justice, defense, public health, general public administration services. The distinction between these two asset classes is very clear: the provision of 'marketable services', regardless of ownership or public or private nature of the service, passes through the market and is priced as a consideration. The provision of 'non-market services', on the other hand, does not pass through the market and is financed with taxes or duties. Thus, for example, health care or education can fall into one or the other class depending on whether they are sold or offered free of charge by the state; the transports are destined to the sale, even if offered by the public administration because they pass through the market; the prisons are not marketable, even if privatized.
Even the non-profit sector, which absorbs growing shares of employment in the most developed countries and falls almost entirely within the tertiary sector, can fall into one or the other category: the free social activities of volunteering are non-marketable services; research, training or non-profit theater, if they are sold on the market, can instead be marketable services. In fact, an essential feature of non-profit organizations is not the method of transferring the service, but the non-distribution of profits, together with the social utility of the service performed.
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