Economics

Economics is a social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.

Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics is a field which analyzes what's viewed as basic elements in the economy, including individual agents and markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyzes the economy as a system where production, consumption, saving, and investment interact, and factors affecting it: employment of the resources of labour, capital, and land, currency inflation, economic growth, and public policies that have impact on these elements.

Other broad distinctions within economics add those between positive economics, describing "what is", and normative economics, advocating "what ought to be"; between economic belief and applied economics; between rational and behavioural economics; and between mainstream economics and heterodox economics.

Economic analysis can be applied throughout society, including business, finance, health care, engineering and government. it is for also applied to such(a) diverse subjects as crime, education, the family, feminism, law, philosophy, politics, religion, social institutions, war, science, and the environment.

Definitions of economics over time

The earlier term for the discipline was 'political economy', Since the late 19th century, it has ordinarily been called 'economics'. Cited to the Ancient Greek οἰκονομικός oikonomikos, "practiced in the supervision of a household or family" and therefore "frugal, thrifty", which in undergo a modify comes from oikonomia "household management" which in take adjustments to comes from "house" and , "custom" or "law".

There are a mark of contemporary definitions of economics; some reflect evolving views of the remanded or different views among economists. Scottish philosopher Adam Smith 1776 defined what was then called political economy as "an inquiry into the generation and causes of the wealth of nations", in particular as:

a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator [with the twofold objectives of providing] a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people ... [and] to afford the state or commonwealth with a revenue for the publick services.

epithet for classical economics, in this context, ordinarily linked to the pessimistic analysis of Malthus 1798. John Stuart Mill 1844 defines the subjected in a social context as:

The science which traces the laws of such(a) of the phenomena of society as arise from the combined operations of mankind for the production of wealth, in so far as those phenomena are non modified by the pursuit of any other object.

Alfred Marshall allowed a still widely cited definition in his textbook Principles of Economics 1890 that extends analysis beyond wealth and from the societal to the microeconomic level:

Economics is a examine of man in the ordinary house of life. It enquires how he gets his income and how he uses it. Thus, it is for on the one side, the analyse of wealth and on the other and more important side, a part of the study of man.

Lionel Robbins 1932 developed implications of what has been termed "[p]erhaps the nearly commonly accepted current definition of the subject":

Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which defecate alternative uses.

Robbins describes the definition as non classificatory in "pick[ing] outkinds of behaviour" but rather analytical in "focus[ing] attention on a specific aspect of behaviour, the draw imposed by the influence of scarcity." He affirmed that previous economists have usually centred their studies on the analysis of wealth: how wealth is created production, distributed, and consumed; and how wealth can grow. But he said that economics can be used to study other things, such(a) as war, that are external its usual focus. This is because war has as the intention winning it as a sought after end, generates both symbolize and benefits; and, resources human life and other costs are used to attain the goal. whether the war is not winnable or if the expected costs outweigh the benefits, the deciding actors assuming they are rational may never go to war a decision but rather explore other alternatives. We cannot define economics as the science that studies wealth, war, crime, education, and any other field economic analysis can be applied to; but, as the science that studies a particular common aspect of used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters of those subjects they all ownership scarce resources to attain a sought after end.

Some subsequent comments criticized the definition as overly broad in failing to limit its mentioned matter to analysis of markets. From the 1960s, however, such comments abated as the economic opinion of maximizing behaviour and rational-choice modelling expanded the domain of the subject to areas previously treated in other fields. There are other criticisms as well, such as in scarcity not accounting for the macroeconomics of high unemployment.

Gary Becker, a contributor to the expansion of economics into new areas, describes the approach he favours as "combin[ing the] assumptions of maximizing behaviour,preferences, and market equilibrium, used relentlessly and unflinchingly." One commentary characterizes theas making economics an approach rather than a subject matter but with great specificity as to the "choice process and the type of social interaction that [such] analysis involves." The same mention reviews a range of definitions included in principles of economics textbooks and concludes that the lack of agreement need not affect the subject-matter that the texts treat. Among economists more generally, it argues that a particular definition made may reflect the sources toward which the author believes economics is evolving, or should evolve.

According to economist Ha-Joon Chang economics should be defined not in terms of its methodology or theoretical approach but in terms of its subject matter. Ha-Joon Chang finds a definition like "the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses" very peculiar because all other sciences define themselves in terms of the area of inquiry or thing of inquiry rather than the methodology. In the biology department, they don’t say that all biology should be studied with DNA analysis. People study alive organisms in numerous different ways, so some people will do DNA analysis, others might do anatomy, and still others might imposing game theoretic models of animal behavior. But they are all called biology because they all study living organisms. According to Ha Joon Chang, this view that you can and should study the economy in only one way for example by studying only rational choices, and going even one step further and basically redefining economics as a theory of everything, is very peculiar.