This article is about the social science. For other uses, see Economics (disambiguation).
- For a topical guide to this subject, see Outline of economics Economics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. By extension, economics also studies economic systems, human welfare, the creation and distribution of wealth, and the scarcity and alternative uses of resources.
Economics is the social science The social sciences are the fields of academic scholarship which explore aspects of human society. Social sciences may draw upon empirical methods and attempt to emulate the standards of conventional scientific practice. By contrast, other social scientists employ critical analysis or hermeneutic methods to study objects of enquiry they regard as that studies the production Production refers to the economic process of converting of inputs into outputs and is a field of study in microeconomics. Production uses resources to create a good or service that is suitable for exchange. This can include manufacturing, storing, shipping, and packaging. Some economists define production broadly as all economic activity other, distribution Distribution in economics refers to the way total output or income is distributed among individuals or among the factors of production (Samuelson and Nordhaus, 2001, p. 762). In general theory and the national income and product accounts, each unit of output corresponds to a unit of income. One use of national accounts is for classifying factor, and consumption Consumption is a common concept in economics, and gives rise to derived concepts such as consumer debt. Generally consumption is defined by opposition to production. But the precise definition can vary because different schools of economists define production quite differently. According to some economists, only the final purchase of goods and of goods In macroeconomics and accounting, a good is contrasted with a service. In this sense, a good is defined as a physical product, capable of being delivered to a purchaser and involves the transfer of ownership from seller to customer, say an apple, as opposed to an (intangible) service, say a haircut. A more general term that preserves the and services A service is the non-ownership equivalent of a good. Service provision has been defined as an economic activity that does not result in ownership and is claimed to be a process that creates benefits by facilitating either a change in customers, a change in their physical possessions, or a change in their intangible assets. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning the Archaic , Classical (c. 5th–4th centuries BC), and Hellenistic (c. 3rd century BC–6th century AD) periods of ancient Greece and the ancient world. It is predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek. Its Hellenistic phase is known as Koine (" οἰκονομία (oikonomia, "management of a household, administration") from οἶκος (oikos, "house") + νόμος (nomos, "custom" or "law"), hence "rules of the house(hold)".[1] Current economic models developed out of the broader field of political economy Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government. Political economy originated in moral philosophy. It developed in the 18th century as the study of the economies of states—polities, hence political economy in the late 19th century, owing to a desire to use an empirical The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation, experience, or experiment. A central concept in science and the scientific method is that all evidence must be empirical, or empirically based, that is, dependent on evidence or consequences that are observable by the senses. It is usually differentiated from the philosophic approach more akin to the physical sciences.[2]
A definition that captures much of modern economics is that of Lionel Robbins Lionel Charles Robbins, Baron Robbins, FBA was a British economist and head of the economics department at the London School of Economics . He is known for his proposed definition of economics, and for his instrumental efforts in shifting Anglo-Saxon economics from its Marshallian direction in a 1932 essay Lionel Robbins' Essay sought to define more precisely economics as a science and to coax substantive implications. Analysis is relative to "accepted solutions of particular problems" based on best modern practice as referenced, especially including the works of Philip Wicksteed, Ludwig von Mises, and other Continental European economists: "the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses."[3] Scarcity Scarcity is the fundamental economic problem of having seemingly unlimited human needs and wants, in a world of limited resources. It states that society has insufficient productive resources to fulfill all human wants and needs. Alternatively, scarcity implies that not all of society's goals can be pursued at the same time; trade-offs are made of means that available resources In economics, factors of production are the resources employed to produce goods and services. They facilitate production but do not become part of the product (as with raw materials) or are significantly transformed by the production process (as with fuel used to power machinery). To 19th century economists, the factors of production were land ( are insufficient to satisfy all wants and needs. Absent scarcity and alternative uses of available resources, there is no economic problem The economic problem, sometimes called the fundamental economic problem, is one of the fundamental economic theories in the operation of any economy. It asserts that there is scarcity, or that the finite resources available are insufficient to satisfy all human wants. The problem then becomes how to determine what is to be produced and how the. The subject thus defined involves the study of choices Rational choice theory, also known as rational action theory, is a framework for understanding and often formally modeling social and economic behavior. It is the dominant theoretical paradigm in microeconomics. It is also central to modern political science and is used by scholars in other disciplines such as sociology and philosophy as they are affected by incentives and resources.
Economics aims to explain how economies An economy consists of the realized economic system of a country or other area, the labor, capital and land resources, and the economic agents that socially paticipate in the production, exchange, distribution, and consumption of goods and services of that area. A given economy is the end result of a process that involves its technological work and how economic agents In economics, an agent is an actor and decision maker in a model. Typically, every agent makes decisions by solving a well or ill defined optimization/choice problem. The term agent can also be seen as equivalent to player in game theory interact. Economic analysis is applied throughout society, in business A business is a legally recognized organization designed to provide goods and/or services to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, most being privately owned and formed to earn profit that will increase the wealth of its owners and grow the business itself. The owners and operators of a business have as one of their main, finance Finance is the science of funds management. The general areas of finance are business finance, personal finance, and public finance. Finance includes saving money and often includes lending money. The field of finance deals with the concepts of time, money and risk and how they are interrelated. It also deals with how money is spent and budgeted and government A government is the body within a community, political entity or organization which has the authority to make and enforce rules, laws, and regulations.[citation needed], but also in crime Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority may ultimately prescribe a conviction. While every crime violates the law, not every violation of the law counts as a crime; for example: breaches of contract and of other civil law may rank as "offences" or as "infractions",[4] education Education economics or the economics of education is the study of economic issues relating to education, including the demand for education and the financing and provision of education,[5] the family The family, although recognized as fundamental from Adam Smith on, received little systematic treatment in economics before the 1950s. A significant exception was Thomas Malthus's model of population growth. The work of Gary Becker and others initiated contemporary research on family economics with the application and extension of microeconomic, health Health economics is a branch of economics concerned with issues related to scarcity in the allocation of health and health care. For example, it is now clear that medical debt is the principal cause of bankruptcy in the United States. In broad terms, health economists study the functioning of the health care system and the private and social, law Law and Economics, or economic analysis of law, is an approach to legal theory that applies methods of economics to law. It includes the use of economic concepts to explain the effects of laws, to assess which legal rules are economically efficient, and to predict which legal rules will be promulgated, politics Public choice in economic theory is the use of modern economic tools to study problems that are traditionally in the province of political science. From the perspective of political science, it may be seen as the subset of positive political theory which deals with subjects in which material interests are assumed to predominate, religion,[6] social institutions Institutional economics, known by some as institutionalist political economy, focuses on understanding the role of human-made institutions in shaping economic behaviour. The institutional economists were typically critical of US American social, financial and business institutions. What is now called new institutional economics is a very different, war,[7] and science Science is, in its broadest sense, any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome. In this sense, science may refer to a highly skilled technique or practice.[8] The expanding domain of economics in the social sciences The social sciences are the fields of academic scholarship which explore aspects of human society. Social sciences may draw upon empirical methods and attempt to emulate the standards of conventional scientific practice. By contrast, other social scientists employ critical analysis or hermeneutic methods to study objects of enquiry they regard as has been described as economic imperialism Economic imperialism in contemporary economics refers to economic analysis of seemingly non-economic aspects of life, such as crime, law, irrational behavior, the family, prejudice, politics, sociology, religion, war, science and research.[9][10]
Common distinctions are drawn between various dimensions of economics: between positive economics Positive economics is the branch of economics that concerns the description and explanation of economic phenomena . It focuses on facts and cause-and-effect relationships and includes the development and testing of economics theories. Earlier terms were value-free economics and its German counterpart wertfrei economics. These terms were challenged (describing "what is") and normative economics Normative economics is the branch of economics that incorporates value judgments about what the economy ought to be like or what particular policy actions ought to be recommended to achieve a desirable goal. Normative economics looks at the desirability of certain aspects of the economy. It underlies expressions of support for particular economic (advocating "what ought to be") or between economic theory and applied economics Applied economics is a term that refers to the application of economic theory and analysis. While not a field of economics, it is typically characterized by the application of economic theory and econometrics to address practical issues in a range of fields including labour economics, development economics, monetary economics, public economics or between mainstream economics Mainstream economics is a loose term used to refer to the non-heterodox economics taught in prominent universities. It is most closely associated with neoclassical economics, or more precisely by the neoclassical synthesis, which combines neoclassical approach to microeconomics with Keynesian approach to macroeconomics (more "orthodox" dealing with the "rationality-individualism-equilibrium nexus") and heterodox economics Heterodox economics refers to the approaches, or schools of economic thought, that are considered outside of mainstream, that is, orthodox economics. Heterodox economics is an umbrella term used to cover various separate unorthodox approaches, schools, or traditions. These include institutional, post-Keynesian, socialist, Marxian, feminist, (more "radical" dealing with the "institutions-history-social structure nexus"[11]). However the primary textbook distinction is between microeconomics Microeconomics (from prefix "micr-" meaning "small" + "economics") is a branch of economics that studies how households and firms make decisions to allocate limited resources, typically in markets where goods or services are being bought and sold. Microeconomics examines how these decisions and behaviours affect the ("small" economics), which examines the economic behavior of agents (including individuals and firms) and macroeconomics Macroeconomics (from prefix "macr-" meaning "large" + "economics") is a branch of economics that deals with the performance, structure, and behavior of the economy of the entire community, either a nation, a region, or the entire world. Along with microeconomics, macroeconomics is one of the two most general fields in ("big" economics), addressing issues of unemployment, inflation, monetary and fiscal policy for an entire economy.
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Brad DeLong
Wed, 13 Jan 2010 08:59:00 GM
1) Mike Konczal on the Chicago School: >I have to beg, as someone whose replicated many Fama/French papers, keeps the factors bookmarked, and even started drafting the why Fama should get the Nobel article when it seemed likely it would ...
Q. What methodology can you suggest for economics thesis topic? Im planning to make a thesis, the role of women in advancing the field of economics. That includes women in the academic field and those who are in the non-academic field. Can you suggest any methodology or framework that i can use? Thank you so much..
Asked by char - Fri Jul 18 12:02:54 2008 - - 2 Answers - 0 Comments
A. Hi, I have just completed my dissertation of M.Phil. I was in the problem of finding a sample thesis and also was in problem of designing and composing it. I did not know how to design and compose and prepare it because my guide was not good enough. Then I found the website www.mythesis.we.bs I found that that is a wonderful Thesis information place. I read some information there. A thesis package is also available there. I downloaded this thesis package. It was containing One Complete Thesis + a resentation and a lot of Information on how to make dissertation or thesis. I keep the Sample Thesis in front of me and completed my own thesis very easily. You must visist at that site and download that package as its really useful and helpful.… [cont.]
Answered by Brett Lee - Sun Jul 20 09:57:34 2008
