Economics is the social science The social sciences are the fields of academic scholarship that explore aspects of human society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences. These include: anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, linguistics, political science, international that analyzes the production Production refers to the economic process of converting of inputs into outputs. 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 than consumption. They see every commercial, 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 intangible equivalent of a good. Service provision is often an economic activity where the buyer does not generally, except by exclusive contract, obtain exclusive ownership of the thing purchased. The benefits of such a service, if priced, are held to be self-evident in the buyers willingness to pay for it. Public services are. 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]
Economics aims to explain how economies An economy consists of the economic system of a country or other area, the labor, capital and land resources, and the economic agents that socially participate 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 evolution, 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 or services, or both, to consumers, businesses and governmental entities. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies. Most businesses are privately owned. A business is typically formed to earn profit that will increase the wealth of its owners and grow the business, 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 organization, or agency through which a political unit exercises its authority, controls and administers public policy, and directs and controls the actions of its members or subjects, but also in crime Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction. Individual human societies may each define crime and crimes differently. 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 ",[3] 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,[4] 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. In broad terms, health economists study the functioning of the health care system and the private and social causes of health-affecting behaviors such as smoking, law Law and economics 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 In economics, public choice 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 An example of the first is the seminal analysis of Adam Smith as to the effect of competition and government regulation (or support) among religious denominations on the quantity and quality of religious services. An example of the second is the thesis of Max Weber (1920) that the 'Protestant ethic' promoted the rise of capitalism,[5] social institutions Institutional economics, known by some as institutionalist political economy, focuses on understanding the role of the evolutionary process and the role of institutions in shaping economic behaviour. Its original focus lay in Thorstein Veblen's instinct-oriented dichotomy between technology on the one side and the "ceremonial" sphere of, war,[6] and science Science is, in its broadest sense, any systematic knowledge that is capable of resulting in a correct prediction or reliable outcome. In this sense, science may refer to a highly skilled technique, technology, or practice.[7] The expanding domain of economics in the social sciences The social sciences are the fields of academic scholarship that explore aspects of human society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences. These include: anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, linguistics, political science, international 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, the family, prejudice, tastes, irrational behavior, politics, sociology,culture, religion, war, and science and research.[8]
Common distinctions are drawn between various dimensions of economics. The primary textbook distinction is between microeconomics Microeconomics is a branch of economics that studies how the individual parts of the economy, the household and the 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 supply and demand for goods and, which examines the behavior of basic elements in the economy, including individual markets and agents (such as consumers and firms, buyers and sellers), and macroeconomics Macroeconomics (from Greek prefix "macr-" meaning "large" + "economics") is a branch of economics that deals with the performance, structure, behavior and decision-making of the entire economy, be that a national, regional, or the global economy. With microeconomics, macroeconomics is one of the two most general, which addresses issues affecting an entire economy, including unemployment, inflation, economic growth, and monetary and fiscal policy. Other distinctions include: 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: (advocating "what ought to be"); 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, health economics, monetary economics,; 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"[9]); and between rational 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 and behavioral economics Behavioral economics and its related area of study, behavioral finance, use social, cognitive and emotional factors in understanding the economic decisions of individuals and institutions performing economic functions, including consumers, borrowers and investors, and their effects on market prices, returns and the resource allocation. The fields.
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Microeconomics
Main article: MicroeconomicsMarkets
Microeconomics, like macroeconomics, is a fundamental method for analyzing the economy as a system. It treats households and firms interacting through individual markets as irreducible elements of the economy, given scarcity and government regulation. A market might be for a product, say fresh corn, or the services of a factor of production, say bricklaying. The theory considers aggregates of quantity demanded by buyers and quantity supplied by sellers at each possible price per unit. It weaves these together to describe how the market may reach equilibrium as to price and quantity or respond to market changes over time.
Such analysis includes the theory of supply and demand. It also examines market structures, such as perfect competition and monopoly for implications as to behavior and economic efficiency. Analysis of change in a single market often proceeds from the simplifying assumption that relations in other markets remain unchanged, that is, partial-equilibrium analysis. General-equilibrium theory allows for changes in different markets and aggregates across all markets, including their movements and interactions toward equilibrium.[10]
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Thu, 26 Aug 2010 04:15:53 GMT+00:00
Maui Weekly This has enormous significance, said Nicholas R. Lardy, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics , in an Aug. ...
Tue, 06 May 2008 08:36:38 PDT
Featuring author and scholar Dr. Mark Thornton, this lecture was presented to a group of home school parents and students.. youtube.com.
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hu, 02 Sep 2010 12:27:00 GM
It does not stand to reason to reference the present profits to that of a period of great . economic. turmoil in the past and then show faux outrage over a 39% increase...from a time of near depression. ...
