Accounting profit is what most people probably envision what they think about profit. Accounting profit is simply dollars in minus dollars out, or total revenue minus total explicit cost. Economic profit, on the other hand, is equal to total revenue minus total economic cost, which is the sum of explicit and implicit costs.
Because economic costs are at least as big as explicit costs (strictly larger, in fact, unless implicit costs are zero), economic profits are less than or equal to accounting profits and are strictly less than accounting profits as long as implicit costs are greater than zero.
