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Economics (deriving from the Greek words οίκω [okos], 'house', and νέμω [nemo], 'rules' hence household management) is the social science that studies the allocation of scarce resources to satisfy unlimited wants. This involves analyzing the production, distribution, trade and consumption of goods and services. Economics is said to be positive when it attempts to explain the consequences of different choices given a set of assumptions or a set of observations, and normative when it prescribes that a certain action should be taken. Terms like SOSE (Studies of Society & the Environment) not only refer to social sciences but also studies of the environment. ...
What is science? There are different theories of what science is. ...
Scarcity is a central concept in economics. ...
This page deals with mathematical distributions. ...
Look up Trade in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Trade centers on the exchange of goods and/or services. ...
Consumption is also an archaic name for the disease tuberculosis, presumably because, prior to the age of modern antibiotics, often it would seem that the disease was consuming patients from within as they coughed up blood. ...
In accounting, a good describes a physical product capable of being delivered to a purchaser and involves the transfer of ownership from seller to customer. ...
Services are: plural of service Tertiary sector of industry IRC services Web services the name of a first-class cricket team in India This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...
In the humanities and social sciences, the term positive is used in a number of ways. ...
An assumption is a proposition that is assumed, i. ...
For railroad use of the term observation, see observation car. ...
In positivist philosophy, normative is contrasted with its antonym, positive, when describing types of theories, beliefs, or statements. ...
The subject is broadly divided into two main branches: microeconomics, which deals with individual agents, such as households and businesses, and macroeconomics, which considers the economy as a whole, in which case it considers aggregate supply and demand for money, capital and commodities. Aspects receiving particular attention in economics are resource allocation, production, distribution, trade, and competition. Economics may in principle be (and increasingly is) applied to any problem that involves choice under scarcity or determining economic value. Microeconomics is the study of the economic behaviour of individual consumers, firms, and industries and the distribution of production and income among them. ...
Macroeconomics is the study of the entire economy in terms of the total amount of goods and services produced, total income earned, the level of employment of productive resources, and the general behavior of prices. ...
In economics, aggregate supply is the total supply of goods and services by a national economy during a specific time period. ...
In economics, aggregate demand is the total demand for goods and services in the economy (Y) during a specific time period. ...
Money is any marketable good or token used by a society as a store of value, a medium of exchange, or a unit of account. ...
Capital has a number of related meanings in economics, finance and accounting. ...
The word commodity is a term with distinct meanings in business and in Marxist political economy. ...
In strategic planning, a resource-allocation decision is a plan for using available resources, especially in the near term, to achieve goals for the future. ...
Competition characterises a biochemical, ecologic, economic, political, or sporting activity whereby two or more individuals or groups strive antagonistically against one another for some reward. ...
Value is a term that expresses the concept of worth in general, and it is thought to be connected to reasons for certain practices, policies, or actions. ...
Some economists use price and supply and demand to create economic models in order to predict the consequences of decisions or events, it also analyses the behaviour of whole societies. (See also sociology, political economy, history) In economics and business, the price is the assigned numerical monetary value of a good, service or asset. ...
The supply and demand model describes how prices vary as a result of a balance between product availability at each price (supply) and the desires of those with purchasing power at each price (demand). ...
A diagram of the IS/LM model In economics, a model is a theoretical construct that represents economic processes by a set of variables and a set of logical and quantitative relationships between them. ...
Social interactions of people and their consequences are the subject of sociology studies. ...
Political economy was the original term for the study of production and the relationships of buying and selling and their relationship to laws, customs and government. ...
History Forums - History is Happening -Discuss all historical topics, as well as current events, in an academic setting. ...
Traditionally economics focused on the satisfaction of material wants and this remains the focus of economics. As the essence of economics is studying incentives, or making choice subject to constraints, the topics covered are broad, and economists have also studied topics ranging from marriage to the death penalty and optimal political institutions.
Download high resolution version (1200x720, 199 KB)Chichicastenango Market, Guatemala. ...
Download high resolution version (1200x720, 199 KB)Chichicastenango Market, Guatemala. ...
Chichicastenango, also known as Santo Tomás Chichicastenango, is a town in the El Quiché department of Guatemala, known for its traditional Maya Indian culture. ...
Areas of study in economics Economics is usually divided into two main branches: - Microeconomics, which examines the economic behaviour of individual actors such as businesses, households, and individuals, with a view to understand decision making in the face of scarcity and the allocation consequences of these decisions.
- Macroeconomics, which examines an economy as a whole with a view to understanding the interaction between economic aggregates such as national income, employment and inflation. Note that general equilibrium theory combines concepts of a macro-economic view of the economy, but does so from a strictly constructed microeconomic viewpoint.
Attempts to join these two branches or to refute the distinction between them have been important motivators in much of recent economic thought, especially in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Today, the consensus view is arguably that good macroeconomics has solid microeconomic foundations. In other words, its premises ought to have theoretical and evidential support in microeconomics. Microeconomics is the study of the economic behaviour of individual consumers, firms, and industries and the distribution of production and income among them. ...
Macroeconomics is the study of the entire economy in terms of the total amount of goods and services produced, total income earned, the level of employment of productive resources, and the general behavior of prices. ...
Measures of national income and output are used in economics to estimate the value of goods and services produced in an economy. ...
Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. ...
General Equilbrium (linear) supply and demand curves. ...
This article provides extensive lists of events and significant personalities of the 1970s. ...
// Events and trends The 1980s marked an abrupt shift towards more conservative lifestyles after the momentous cultural revolutions which took place in the 1960s and 1970s and the definition of the AIDS virus in 1981. ...
Economics can also be divided into numerous subdisciplines that do not always fit neatly into the macro-micro categorization. These subdisciplines include: international economics, labour economics, welfare economics, neuroeconomics, information economics, resource economics, environmental economics, managerial economics, financial economics, urban economics, development economics, and economic geography. International economics is the branch of economics relating to ideas such as International trade, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and the exchange rate and how they influence one another. ...
Labour economics seeks to understand the functioning of the market for labour. ...
Welfare economics is a branch of economics that uses microeconomic techniques to simultaneously determine the allocational efficiency of a macroeconomy and the income distribution consequences associated with it. ...
Neuroeconomics combines neuroscience, economics, and psychology to study how we make choices. ...
Information economics is a branch of Economics that studies how information affects economic decisions. ...
The field of resource economics includes the study of environmental economics, agricultural production and marketing, bioeconomics, community economic development, resource utilization, and environmental policy. ...
Environmental economics is a subfield of economics concerned with environmental issues (other usages of the term are not uncommon). ...
Managerial economics (also called business economics), is a branch of economics that applies microeconomic analysis to specific business decisions. ...
Financial economics is the branch of economics concerned with the workings of financial markets, such as the stock market, and the financing of companies. ...
This article needs cleanup. ...
Development economics is a branch of macroeconomics that deals with the study of the causes of long term economic growth, especially in developing countries. ...
Economic geography is the study of the widely varying economic conditions across the earth. ...
There are also methodologies used by economists whose underlying theories are important.
Other subdivisions are possible. Finance has traditionally been considered a part of economics – as its body of results emerges naturally from microeconomics – but has today effectively established itself as a separate, though closely related, discipline. Econometrics literally means economic measurement. It is a combination of mathematical economics, statistics, economic statistics and economic theory. ...
Economic data are usually numerical time-series, i. ...
Computational economics is a form of economics which relies on mathematical methods, including econometrics. ...
Social psychology is the study of the nature and causes of human social behavior. ...
Nobel Prize in Economics winner Daniel Kahneman, was an important figure in the development of behavioral finance and economics and continues to write extensively in the field. ...
Experimental Economics is the use of experimental methods to evaluate theoretical predictions of economic behaviour. ...
Finance studies and addresses the ways in which individuals, businesses and organizations raise, allocate and use monetary resources over time, taking into account the risks entailed in their projects. ...
There has been an increasing trend for ideas and methods from economics to be applied in wider contexts. Since economic analysis focuses on decision making, it can be applied, with varying degrees of success, to any field where people are faced with alternatives – education, marriage, health, etc. Public choice theory studies how economic analysis can apply to those fields traditionally considered outside of economics. The areas of investigation in economics therefore overlap with other social sciences, including political science and sociology. The most prevalent political economy is loosely called capitalism. Marriage is a relationship and bond, most commonly between a man and a woman, that plays a key role in the definition of many families. ...
Public choice theory is a branch of economics that studies the decision-making behavior of voters, politicians and government officials from the perspective of economic theory. ...
Niccolò Machiavelli, ca 1500, became the key figure in realistic political theory, crucial to political science Political Science is an academic and research discipline that deals with the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behavior. ...
Social interactions of people and their consequences are the subject of sociology studies. ...
Capitalism has been defined in various ways (see q:Capitalism). ...
See political economy for the study of economics in the context of political science, and socioeconomics for the study of economics in the context of sociology. Political economy was the original term for the study of production and the relationships of buying and selling and their relationship to laws, customs and government. ...
Socioeconomics is the study of the social and economic impacts of any product or service offering, market intervention or other activity on an economy as a whole and on the companies, organization and individuals who are its main economic actors. ...
Economic assumptions
Supply and demand
 The supply and demand model describes how prices vary as a result of a balance between product availability and demand. The graph depicts an increase in demand from D 1 to D 2 along with the consequent increase in price and quantity required to reach a new equilibrium point on the supply curve (S). Main article: Supply and demand. This image may not display exactly as it is intended in Internet Explorer. ...
This image may not display exactly as it is intended in Internet Explorer. ...
The supply and demand model describes how prices vary as a result of a balance between product availability at each price (supply) and the desires of those with purchasing power at each price (demand). ...
The supply and demand model describes how prices vary as a result of a balance between product availability at each price (supply) and the desires of those with purchasing power at each price (demand). ...
In microeconomic theory supply and demand attempts to describe, explain, and predict the price and quantity of goods sold in competitive markets. It is one of the most fundamental economic models, ubiquitously used as a basic building block in a wide range of more detailed economic models and theories. Microeconomics is the study of the economic behaviour of individual consumers, firms, and industries and the distribution of production and income among them. ...
The word theory has a number distinct meanings depending on the context. ...
In economics and business, the price is the assigned numerical monetary value of a good, service or asset. ...
A market is a mechanism which allows people to trade, normally governed by the theory of supply and demand, so allocating resources through the price mechanism. ...
A diagram of the IS/LM model In economics, a model is a theoretical construct that represents economic processes by a set of variables and a set of logical and quantitative relationships between them. ...
In general, the theory claims that where goods are traded in a market at a price where consumers demand more goods than businesses are prepared to supply, this shortage will tend to increase the price of the goods. Those consumers that are prepared to pay more will lead to an increase in the market price. Conversely, prices will tend to fall when the quantity supplied exceeds the quantity demanded. This process continues until the market approaches an equilibrium point, a point at which there is no longer any impetus to change. When producers are willing to supply the same quantity as buyers are willing to buy, the market is at equilibrium point where both the buyers as well as the sellers are agreeable to the price level. A good in economics is anything that increases utility. ...
The theory of supply and demand is important in the functioning of a market economy in that it explains the mechanism by which many decisions about resource allocation are made. A market economy is a term used to describe an economy where economic decisions, such as pricing of goods and services, are made in a decentralized manner by the economys participants and manifested by trade. ...
Price In order to measure the ebb and flow of supply and demand, a measurable value is needed. The oldest and most commonly used is price, or the going rate of exchange between buyers and sellers in a market. Price theory, therefore, charts the movement of measurable quantities over time, and the relationship between price and other measurable variables. In Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, this was the trade-off between price and convenience. A great deal of economic theory is based around prices and the theory of supply and demand. In economic theory, the most efficient form of communication comes about when changes to an economy occur through price, such as when an increase in supply leads to a lower price, or an increase in demand leads to a higher price. Adam Smith Adam Smith (Baptised June 5, 1723 – July 17, 1790) was a Scottish political economist and moral philosopher. ...
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is the magnum opus of Adam Smith, published in 1776. ...
The supply and demand model describes how prices vary as a result of a balance between product availability at each price (supply) and the desires of those with purchasing power at each price (demand). ...
In many practical economic models, some form of "price stickiness" is incorporated to model the fact that prices do not move fluidly in many markets. Economic policy often revolves around arguments about the cause of "economic friction", or price stickiness, and which is, therefore, preventing the supply and demand from reaching equilibrium. Download high resolution version (2392x1561, 621 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...
Download high resolution version (2392x1561, 621 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...
International trade is the exchange of goods and services across international borders. ...
Another area of economic controversy is about whether price measures value correctly. In mainstream market economics, where there are significant scarcities not factored into price, there is said to be an externalization of cost. Market economics predicts that scarce goods which are under-priced are over-consumed (See social cost). This leads into public goods theory. An externality occurs in economics when a decision (for example, to pollute the atmosphere) causes costs or benefits to individuals or groups other than the person making the decision. ...
Social cost, in economics, is the total of all the costs associated with an economic activity. ...
In economics, a public good is a good that is hard or even impossible to produce for private profit, because the market fails to account for its large beneficial externalities. ...
Scarcity Main article: Scarcity Scarcity is a central concept in economics. ...
Scarcity is central to economic theory. Economic analysis is fundamentally about the maximization of something (leisure time, wealth, health, happiness - all commonly reduced to the concept of utility) subject to constraints. These constraints - or scarcity - inevitably define a trade-off. For example, one can have more money by working harder, but less time (there are only so many hours in a day, so time is scarce). One can have more radishes only at the expense of, say, fewer carrots (you only have so much land on which to grow food - land is scarce). This article is about utility in economics and in game theory. ...
Adam Smith considered, for example, the trade-off between time, or convenience, and money. He discussed how a person could live near town, and pay more for rent of his home, or live farther away and pay less, "paying the difference out of his convenience".
 Trades on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange always involve a face-to-face interaction. There is one podium/desk on the trading floor for each of the exchange's three thousand or so stocks. The date of this image, (obtained from the file name of the source image) appears to be 6 April 2001. ...
The date of this image, (obtained from the file name of the source image) appears to be 6 April 2001. ...
Look up Trade in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Trade centers on the exchange of goods and/or services. ...
New York Stock Exchange (June 2003) The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is the second largest stock exchange in the world. ...
A stock, also referred to as a share, is commonly a share of ownership in a corporation. ...
Marginalism Main article: marginalism In economics, marginalism is the theory that economic value results from marginal utility and marginal cost. ...
In marginalist economic theory, the price level is determined by the marginal cost and marginal utility. The price of all goods will be the cost of making the last one that people will purchase, and the price of all the employees in a company will be the cost of hiring the last one the business needs. Marginalism looks at decisions based on "the margins", what the cost to produce the next unit is, versus how much it is expected to return in profit. When the marginal return of an action reaches zero, the action stops. Marginal utility is how much more happiness or use a person receives from a purchase in contrast with buying less. Marginal rewards are often subject to diminishing returns: Less reward is obtained from more production or consumption. For example, the 10th bar of chocolate that a person consumes does not taste as good as the first, and so brings less marginal utility. In economics, marginalism is the theory that economic value results from marginal utility and marginal cost. ...
In economics and finance, marginal cost is the cost of increasing the quantity produced (or purchased) by one unit. ...
In economics, marginal utility is the additional utility (satisfaction or benefit) that a consumer derives from an additional unit of a commodity or service. ...
In economics, diminishing returns is the short form of diminishing marginal returns, the concept that, as more of an input is applied, each additional unit produces less and less additional output. ...
Marginalism became increasingly important in economic theory in the late 19th century, and is a tool which is used to analyse how economic systems will react. Marginal cost of production divides costs into "fixed" costs which must be paid regardless of how many of a commodity are produced, and "variable costs". The marginal cost is the variable cost of the last unit. Marginalism states that when the profit from the next unit will be zero, that unit will not be produced. In economics, business, and accounting, a cost is a price paid, or otherwise associated with, a commercial event or economic transaction. ...
The marginalist theory of price level runs counter to the classical theory of price being determined by the amount of labour congealed in a commodity.
Value It could be argued that beneath an economic theory is a theory of value. Value can be defined as the underlying activity which economics describes and measures. It is what is "really" happening. Value is a term that expresses the concept of worth in general, and it is thought to be connected to reasons for certain practices, policies, or actions. ...
Adam Smith defined "labour" as the underlying source of value, and "the labour theory of value" underlies the work of Karl Marx, David Ricardo and many other classical economists. The "labour theory of value" argues that a good or service is worth the labour that it takes to produce. For most, this value determines a commodity's price. This labour theory of price and the closely related cost-of-production theory of value dominates the work of most classical economists, but those theories are far from the only accepted basis for "value". For example, neoclassical economists and Austrian School economists prefer the marginal theory of value. US government image of gold certificate. ...
US government image of gold certificate. ...
Representative money refers to money that consists of a token or certificate that can be exchanged for a fixed quantity of a commodity such as gold, silver or potentially water, oil or food. ...
1922 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ...
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations by or about: United States Wikinews has news related to this article: United States United States government Official website of the United States government - Gateway to governmental sites White House - Official site of the US President Senate. ...
General Name, Symbol, Number Gold, Au, 79 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 11 (IB), 6, d Density, Hardness 19300 kg/m3, 2. ...
The labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory in economics and political economy concerning a market-oriented society: the theory equates the value of an exchangeable good or service (i. ...
David Ricardo (April 18, 1772 — September 11, 1823), a British political economist, is often credited with systematizing economics, and was one of the most influential of the classical economists. ...
In economics, the cost-of-production theory of value is the belief that the value of an object is decided by the resources that went into making it. ...
Neoclassical economics is the grouping of a number of schools of thought in economics. ...
The Austrian School is a school of economic thought which rejects opposing economists reliance on methods used in natural science for the study of human action, and instead bases its formalism of economics on relationships through logic or introspection called praxeology. ...
The marginal theory of value asserts that the economic value of an object or service is set by the consumers marginal utility. ...
"Market theory" argues that there is no "value" separate from price, that the market incorporates all available information into price, and that so long as markets are open, that price and the value are one and the same. This theory rests on the idea of the "rational economic actor". This was originally asserted by Mill.
Another set of theories rest on the idea that there is a basic external scarcity, and that "value" represents the relationship to that basic scarcity. These theories include those based on economics being limited by energy or based on a "gold standard".
All of these value theories are used in current economic work.
Economic language and reasoning Economics relies on rigorous styles of argument. Economic methodology has several interacting parts: - Collection of economic data. These data consist of measurable values of price and changes in price, for measurable commodities. For example: the cost to hire a worker for a week, or the cost of a particular commodity, and how much is typically used.
- Formulation of models of economic relationships, for example, the relationship between the general level of prices and the general level of employment. This includes observable forms of economic activity, such as money, consumption, preferences, buying, selling, and prices. Some of the models are simple accounting models, while others postulate specific kinds of economic behaviour, such as utility or profit maximization. An example of a model that illustrates both of these aspects is the classical mathematical formulation of the Keynesian system involving the consumption function and the national income identity. This article will refer to such models as formal models, although they are not formal in the sense of formal logic.
- Production of economic statistics. Taking the data collected, and applying the model being used to produce a representation of economic activity. For example, the "general price level" is a theoretical idea common to macroeconomic models. The specific inflation rate involves taking measurable prices, and a model of how people consume, and calculating what the "general price level" is from the data within the model. For example, suppose that diesel fuel costs 1 euro a litre: To calculate the price level would require a model of how much diesel an average person uses, and what fraction of its income is devoted to this —but it also requires having a model of how people use diesel, and what other goods they might substitute for it.
- Reasoning within economic models. This process of reasoning (see the articles on informal logic, logical argument, fallacy) sometimes involves advanced mathematics. For instance, an established (though possibly unexamined) tradition among economists is to reason about economic variables in two-dimensional graphs in which curves representing relations between the axis variables are parametrized by various indices. A good example of this type of reasoning is exhibited by Paul Krugman's online essay, There's something about macro. See also the article IS/LM model. One critical analysis of economic reasoning is studied in Paul Samuelson's thesis, Foundations of Economic Analysis: he identifies a class of assertions called operationally meaningful theorems which are those that can be meaningfully formulated within an economic model. As usual in science, the conclusions obtained by reasoning have a predictive as well as confirmative (or dismissive) value. An example of the predictive value of economic theory is a prediction as to the effect of current deficits on interest rates 10 years into the future. An example of the confirmative value of economic theory would be confirmation (or dismissal) of theories concerning the relation between marginal tax rates and the deficit.
Formal modelling is motivated by general principles of consistency and completeness. A diagram of the IS/LM model In economics, a model is a theoretical construct that represents economic processes by a set of variables and a set of logical and quantitative relationships between them. ...
Money is any marketable good or token used by a society as a store of value, a medium of exchange, or a unit of account. ...
Accountancy (British English) or accounting (American English) is the process of maintaining, auditing, and processing financial information for business purposes. ...
Keynesian economics, or Keynesianism, is an economic theory based on the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, as put forward in his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936 in response to the Great Depression of the 1930s. ...
In economics, the consumption fuction calculates the amount of total consumption in an economy. ...
Measures of national income and output are used in economics to estimate the value of goods and services produced in an economy. ...
Logic (from ancient Greek λόγος (logos), meaning reason) is the study of arguments. ...
Informal logic is the study of natural language arguments, and is typically less analytical than formal logic. ...
An argument is an attempt to demonstrate the truth of an assertion called a conclusion, based on the truth of a set of assertions called premises. ...
The term fallacy denotes any mistaken statement used in an argument. ...
Paul Robin Krugman (born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, who has written several books and who currently (as of 2005) is a columnist for The New York Times. ...
The IS curve moves to the right, causing higher interest rates and expansion in the real economy (real GDP). ...
Paul A. Samuelson (born May 15, 1915) is an American economist known for his work in many fields of economics. ...
The New York Times reported on Einsteins confirmed prediction. ...
Formal modelling has been adopted to some extent by all branches of economics. It is not identical to what is often referred to as mathematical economics; this includes, but is not limited to, an attempt to set microeconomics, in particular general equilibrium, on solid mathematical foundations. Some reject mathematical economics: The Austrian School of economics believes that anything beyond simple logic is often unnecessary and inappropriate for economic analysis. In fact, the entire empirical-deductive framework sketched in this section may be rejected outright by that school. However, the framework sketched here accurately represents the current predominant view of economics. Mathematical economics is the sub-field of economics that explores the mathematical aspects of economic systems. ...
Microeconomics is the study of the economic behaviour of individual consumers, firms, and industries and the distribution of production and income among them. ...
Mathematics is commonly defined as the study of patterns of structure, change, and space; more informally, one might say it is the study of figures and numbers. Mathematical knowledge is constantly growing, through research and application, but mathematics itself is not usually considered a natural science. ...
The Austrian School is a school of economic thought which rejects opposing economists reliance on methods used in natural science for the study of human action, and instead bases its formalism of economics on relationships through logic or introspection called praxeology. ...
Development of economic thought Main article: History of economic thought. Adam Smith This image is in the public domain because its copyright has expired in the United States and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years. ...
Adam Smith This image is in the public domain because its copyright has expired in the United States and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years. ...
The term economics was coined around 1870 and popularized by Alfred Marshall, as a substitute for the earlier term political economy which has been used through the 18-19th centuries, with Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx as its main thinkers and which today is frequently referred to as...
The term economics was coined around 1870 and popularized by influential "neoclassical" economists such as Alfred Marshall (Welfare definition), as a substitute for the earlier term political economy, which referred to "the economy of polities" – competing states. The term political economy was used through the 18th and 19th centuries, with Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx as its main thinkers and which today is frequently referred to as the "classical" economic theory. Both "economy" and "economics" are derived from the Greek oikos- for "house" or "settlement", and nomos for "laws" or "norms". 1870 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ...
Alfred Marshall Alfred Marshall (July 26, 1842–July 13, 1924), born in Bermondsey, London, England, became one of the most influential economists of his time. ...
Alfred Marshall, a pioneer neoclassical economist, reoriented economics towards the study of mankind and provided economic science with a more comprehensive definition. ...
Political economy was the original term for the study of production and the relationships of buying and selling and their relationship to laws, customs and government. ...
A state is an organized political community occupying a definite territory, having an organized government, and possessing internal and external sovereignty. ...
Adam Smith Adam Smith (Baptised June 5, 1723 – July 17, 1790) was a Scottish political economist and moral philosopher. ...
David Ricardo (April 18, 1772 — September 11, 1823), a British political economist, is often credited with systematizing economics, and was one of the most influential of the classical economists. ...
Karl Marx Karl Marx (May 5, 1818 Trier, Germany – March 14, 1883 London, UK) was an influential German philosopher, political economist, and revolutionary organizer of the International Workingmens Association. ...
Economic thought may be roughly divided into three phases: Premodern (Greek, Roman, Arab), Early modern (mercantilist, physiocrats) and Modern (since Adam Smith in the late 18th century). Systematic economic theory has been developed mainly since the birth of the modern era. Ancient Rome was a civilization that existed in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East between 753 BC and its downfall in AD 476. ...
The Arabs (Arabic: عرب ʻarab) are an originally Arabian ethnicity widespread in the Middle East and North Africa. ...
Mercantilism is the economic theory that a nations prosperity depended upon its supply of gold and silver, that the total volume of trade is unchangeable. ...
The Physiocrats were a group of thinkers who believed in an economic theory which considered that the wealth of nations was derived solely from agriculture. ...
Adam Smith Adam Smith (Baptised June 5, 1723 – July 17, 1790) was a Scottish political economist and moral philosopher. ...
(17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ...
The terms Modern World, Modern Period, New World, Modern Times, Progressive Age, Modern Age, or Modern Era are recognized by historians as being that period of time commencing after the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, after the mid-18th century. ...
Schools of economic thought There have been different and competing schools of economic thought pertaining to capitalism from the late 18th century to the early day. Important schools of thought are Classical economics, Marxian economics, Keynesian economics, Neoclassical economics, Austrian School, and New classical economics. Classical economics is a school of economic thought whose major developers include William Petty, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, and John Stuart Mill. ...
Marxian economics refers to a body of economic thought stemming from the work of Karl Marx. ...
Keynesian economics, or Keynesianism, is an economic theory based on the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, as put forward in his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936 in response to the Great Depression of the 1930s. ...
Neoclassical economics is the grouping of a number of schools of thought in economics. ...
The Austrian School is a school of economic thought which rejects opposing economists reliance on methods used in natural science for the study of human action, and instead bases its formalism of economics on relationships through logic or introspection called praxeology. ...
New Classical Economics emerged as a school in Macroeconomics during the 1970s. ...
Neo-classical economics Neo-classical economics begins with the premise that resources are scarce and that it is necessary to choose between competing alternatives. That is, economics deals with tradeoffs. With scarcity, choosing one alternative implies forgoing another alternative - the opportunity cost. The opportunity costs creates an implicit price relationship between competing alternatives. In addition, in both market oriented and planned economies, scarcity is often explicitly quantified by price relationships. A Tradeoff usually refers to losing one quality or aspect of something in return for gaining another quality or aspect. ...
Opportunity cost is a term used in economics, to mean the cost of something in terms of an opportunity foregone (and the benefits that could be received from that opportunity), or the most valuable foregone alternative. ...
In economics and business, the price is the assigned numerical monetary value of a good, service or asset. ...
Understanding choices by individuals and groups is central. Economists believe that incentives and desires play an important role in shaping decision making. Concepts from the Utilitarian school of philosophy are used as analytical concepts within economics, though economists appreciate that society may not adopt utilitarian objectives. One example of this is the idea of a utility function, which is assumed to represent how economic agents rank the choices given to them. A given economic alternative can be thought of as a vector where the entries are answers to questions like "How many eggs should I buy?", "How many hours should I spend with my kids?", and "How much money should I set aside for later?". Then the utility function ranks these from best to worst, and the agent gradually learns to choose the best-ranked choice in the feasible set of his alternatives. Decision making is the cognitive process of selecting a course of action from among multiple alternatives. ...
Utilitarianism (from the Latin utilis, useful) is a theory of ethics based on quantitative maximisation of happiness for society or humanity. ...
The term philosophy derives from a combination of the Greek words philos meaning love and sophia meaning wisdom. ...
This article is about utility in economics and in game theory. ...
The word vector means carrier in Latin; it is derived from the Latin verb vehere, which means to carry. ...
In combinatorics, a greedoid is a type of set system. ...
Economics and other disciplines There is some tension between economics and theories of ethics, historically a branch of philosophy, which emphasizes how people ought to conduct ourselves and balances of rights and duties. Modern economics deals with this tension explicitly: According to some thinkers, a theory of economics is also, or implies also, a theory of moral reasoning. One way economists deal with this is to qualify discussions of economic choice by noting the qualifier ceteris paribus ("all other things held constant...") referring to moral or social factors that are (for the sake of argument) held equivalent for all choices that one might make. Ethics is a general term for what is often described as the science (study) of morality. In philosophy, ethical behavior is that which is good or right. ...
For the direction right, see left and right or starboard. ...
This article is in need of attention. ...
Moral reasoning is a study in psychology that overlaps with moral philosophy. ...
The economic choice model is central in many economic paradigms such as the classical, neoclassical and modern paradigms. ...
Ceteris paribus is a Latin phrase, literally translated as other things the same, and usually rendered in English as all other things being equal. ...
For exploration of this issue, see the moral purchasing article. Ethical consumerism is the practice of boycotting products which a consumer believes to be associated with unnecessary exploitation or other unethical behaviour. ...
Another premise is that economics fits within a finite ecosystem where there are at least some abundant resources. For instance, when fuelling a fire, people are usually concerned with finding the wood, and not with finding the air to burn it with. Economics explicitly does not deal with free abundant inputs – one criticism is that it often conflicts with ecology's view of what affects what. Human beings are, according to ecologists, merely one species participating in a vast energy system on this planet – economy is a subset of ecology that deals with just one species' habits and wants. Ecological economics is a branch of economic theory, also known as human development theory or natural welfare economics, that assumes an inherent link between the health of ecosystems and that of human beings. ...
Energy economics is a subfield of economics that focuses on energy relationships as the foundation of all other relationships. ...
See nature's services for the economic view of ecology and green economics for the view in which economics is a subset of ecology. Natures services is an umbrella term for the ways in which nature benefits humans, particularly those benefits that can be measured in economic terms. ...
Green economics loosely defines a theory of economics by which an economy is considered to be component of the ecosystem in which it resides. ...
A third premise is that economics suggests market forms and other means of distribution of scarce goods that affect not just "desires and wants" but also "needs" and "habits". Much of so-called economic "choice" is involuntary, certainly given the conditioning that people have to expect certain quality of life. This leads to one of the most hotly debated areas in economic policy: namely, the effect and efficacy of welfare policies. Libertarians, view this as a failure to respect economic reasoning. They argue that redistribution of wealth is morally and economically wrong. And socialists view it as a failure of economics to respect society. They argue that disparities of wealth should not have been allowed in the first place. This led to both 19th century labour economics and 20th century welfare economics before being subsumed into human development theory. In economics, the main criteria by which one can distinguish between different market forms are: the number and size of producers and consumers on the market, the type of goods and services being traded, and the degree to which information can flow freely. ...
Conditioning is a psychological term for what Ivan Pavlov described as the learning of conditional behavior. ...
The well-being or quality of life of a population is an important concern in economics and political science. ...
This article deals with the libertarianism as defined in America and several other nations. ...
For information on mainstream political parties using the term Socialist, see Social democracy and Democratic socialism, For the governments of the USSR, the PRC, and others, see: Communist state, Other variants of Socialism include Marxism, Communism, and Libertarian Socialism. ...
Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Labour economics seeks to understand the functioning of the market for labour. ...
(19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the...
Welfare economics is a branch of economics that uses microeconomic techniques to simultaneously determine the allocational efficiency of a macroeconomy and the income distribution consequences associated with it. ...
Human development theory is an economic theory that merges older ideas from ecological economics, sustainable development, welfare economics, and feminist economics. ...
The older term for economics, political economy, is still often used instead of economics, especially by certain economists such as Marxists. Use of this term often signals a basic disagreement with the terminology or paradigm of market economics. Political economy explicitly bring political considerations into economic analysis and is therefore openly normative, although this can be said of many economic recommendations as well, despite claims to being positive. Some mainstream universities (such as the University of Toronto and many in the United Kingdom) have a "political economy" department rather than an "economics" department. Political economy was the original term for the study of production and the relationships of buying and selling and their relationship to laws, customs and government. ...
Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ...
In positivist philosophy, normative is contrasted with its antonym, positive, when describing types of theories, beliefs, or statements. ...
In common usage positive is sometimes used in affirmation, as a synonym for yes or to express certainty. In mathematics, a number is called positive if it is bigger than zero. ...
The University of Toronto (U of T), in Toronto, Ontario, is the largest university in Canada with more than 60,000 students across three campuses. ...
Information theory has been applied to economics since the work of Ronald Coase in the 1930s. However, with Herbert Simon and John von Neumann in the 1950s, it gathered a more specific formalism as part of game theory. This emphasises that the decision-making process itself is costly. Information theory is a branch of the mathematical theory of probability and mathematical statistics that quantifies the concept of information. ...
Ronald Coase (born December 29, 1910) is a British economist. ...
Herbert Simon (June 15, 1916–February 9, 2001) was a researcher in the fields of cognitive psychology, computer science, economics and philosophy (sometimes described as a polymath). ...
John von Neumann in the 1940s. ...
The word formalism has several meanings: A certain school in the philosophy of mathematics, stressing axiomatic proofs through theorems specifically associated with David Hilbert. ...
Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that uses models to study interactions with formalised incentive structures (games). It has applications in a variety of fields, including economics, international relations, evolutionary biology, political science, and military strategy. ...
Marxist economics generally denies the trade-off of time for money. In the Marxist view, concentrated control over the means of production is the basis for the allocation of resources among classes. Scarcity of any particular physical resource is subsidiary to the central question of power relationships embedded in the means of production.
The question of the environment is viewed, in the traditional economic framework, as being related to the externalization of costs. That is, market economics assumes that underpriced goods are overconsumed. Externalization of cost, in this view, will be corrected by pricing the overconsumed resources see Pigovian taxes. Social cost, in economics, is the total of all the costs associated with an economic activity. ...
See also - Microeconomics
- Microeconomics | Supply and Demand | Consumer Theory | Production theory | Experimental economics | Behavioural economics | General equilibrium | Industrial organization | Financial economics | Managerial economics | International trade | Labour economics | Development economics | Environmental economics | Welfare economics | Public choice theory | Public goods | Transport economics | Health economics | Marginal demand | Political psychology
- Macroeconomics
- Macroeconomics | Keynesian economics | Phillips curve | IS/LM model | Aggregate demand | Stabilization policy | Monetary policy | Monetarism | Fiscal policy | Economic growth | Purchasing power parity | Business cycle | Austrian School | New Keynesian economics | Gold standard | Supply side economics | Ricardan equivalence hypothesis
- Methodology
- Cycles | Econometrics | Game Theory | Mathematical economics | Evolutionary economics
- Related fields
- History of economic thought | Economic history | Praxeology | Political economy | Political science | Economic geography | Finance | Operations research | Economic anthropology | Public finance | Home economics | Neuroeconomics
- Criticism
- Post Autistic Economics
- Steve Keen | Paul Ormerod
- Selected topics
- Commercialism | Communism | Capitalism | Coordinatorism | Deregulation | economic indicator | Exploitation | Freiwirtschaft | Informal economy | Labour theory of value | Laissez-faire | Market economy | Marxism | Mutualism | Nationalization | Natural capitalism | Network effect | Participatory economics | Planned economy | Privatization | Real wage | Regulation | Socialism | Socialist economics | Stock exchange | Synthetic economies | Taxation | Welfare
Microeconomics is the study of the economic behaviour of individual consumers, firms, and industries and the distribution of production and income among them. ...
The supply and demand model describes how prices vary as a result of a balance between product availability at each price (supply) and the desires of those with purchasing power at each price (demand). ...
Consumer theory relates preferences, indifference curves and budget constraints to consumer demand curves. ...
See also: record producer. ...
Experimental Economics is the use of experimental methods to evaluate theoretical predictions of economic behaviour. ...
Nobel Prize in Economics winner Daniel Kahneman, was an important figure in the development of behavioral finance and economics and continues to write extensively in the field. ...
General Equilbrium (linear) supply and demand curves. ...
Industrial organization is the field of economics that studies the behavior of firms, the structure of markets and of their interactions. ...
Financial economics is the branch of economics concerned with the workings of financial markets, such as the stock market, and the financing of companies. ...
Managerial economics (also called business economics), is a branch of economics that applies microeconomic analysis to specific business decisions. ...
International trade is the exchange of goods and services across international borders. ...
Labour economics seeks to understand the functioning of the market for labour. ...
Development economics is a branch of macroeconomics that deals with the study of the causes of long term economic growth, especially in developing countries. ...
Environmental economics is a subfield of economics concerned with environmental issues (other usages of the term are not uncommon). ...
Welfare economics is a branch of economics that uses microeconomic techniques to simultaneously determine the allocational efficiency of a macroeconomy and the income distribution consequences associated with it. ...
Public choice theory is a branch of economics that studies the decision-making behavior of voters, politicians and government officials from the perspective of economic theory. ...
In economics, a public good is a good that is hard or even impossible to produce for private profit, because the market fails to account for its large beneficial externalities. ...
Transport economics is a cross-disciplinary study linking civil engineering and economics. ...
Health economics is a branch of economics concerned with the formal analysis of costs, benefits, management and consequences of health care. ...
Marginal demand is the term in economics that refers to the change in demand for a product or service in response to a specific change in its price. ...
Political psychology is an interdisciplinary academic field dedicated to the study of the psychology behind political behavior. ...
Macroeconomics is the study of the entire economy in terms of the total amount of goods and services produced, total income earned, the level of employment of productive resources, and the general behavior of prices. ...
Keynesian economics, or Keynesianism, is an economic theory based on the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, as put forward in his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936 in response to the Great Depression of the 1930s. ...
In macroeconomics, the Phillips curve is a supposed inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment. ...
The IS curve moves to the right, causing higher interest rates and expansion in the real economy (real GDP). ...
In economics, aggregate demand is the total demand for goods and services in the economy (Y) during a specific time period. ...
A stabilisation policy is a package or set of measures introduced to stabilise a financial system or economy that is in difficult circumstances. ...
Monetary policy is the process of managing a nations money supply to achieve specific goals—such as constraining inflation, achieving full employment or more well-being. ...
Monetarism is a set of views concerning the determination of national income and monetary economics. ...
Fiscal Policy is the economic term which describes the behaviour of governments in raising money to fund current spending and investment for collective social purposes and for transfer payments to citizens and residents of the territory for which the government is responsible. ...
Economic growth is the increase in the value of goods and services produced by an economy. ...
In economics, purchasing power parity (PPP) is a method used to calculate an alternative exchange rate between the currencies of two countries. ...
An abstract business cycle The business cycle or economic cycle refers to the ups and downs seen somewhat simultaneously in most parts of an economy. ...
The Austrian School is a school of economic thought which rejects opposing economists reliance on methods used in natural science for the study of human action, and instead bases its formalism of economics on relationships through logic or introspection called praxeology. ...
New Keynesian economics developed partly in response to new classical economics. ...
1922 U.S. gold certificate The gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed weight of gold. ...
Supply-side economics is a school of macroeconomic thought which emphasizes the importance of tax cuts and business incentives in encouraging economic growth, in the belief that businesses and individuals will use their tax savings to create new businesses and expand old businesses, which in turn will increase productivity, employment...
Ricardian equivalence in economics is a controversial theory which suggests that government budget deficits do not affect the total level of demand in an economy. ...
Cycles are series of states or conditions that repeat themselves, usually after a regular or nearly regular period. ...
Econometrics literally means economic measurement. It is a combination of mathematical economics, statistics, economic statistics and economic theory. ...
Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that uses models to study interactions with formalised incentive structures (games). It has applications in a variety of fields, including economics, international relations, evolutionary biology, political science, and military strategy. ...
Mathematical economics is the sub-field of economics that explores the mathematical aspects of economic systems. ...
Evolutionary economics is a relatively new economic methodology that is modeled on biology. ...
The term economics was coined around 1870 and popularized by Alfred Marshall, as a substitute for the earlier term political economy which has been used through the 18-19th centuries, with Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx as its main thinkers and which today is frequently referred to as...
Economic history is the application of economic theories to historical study. ...
Praxeology is the science of human action. ...
Political economy was the original term for the study of production and the relationships of buying and selling and their relationship to laws, customs and government. ...
Niccolò Machiavelli, ca 1500, became the key figure in realistic political theory, crucial to political science Political Science is an academic and research discipline that deals with the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behavior. ...
Economic geography is the study of the widely varying economic conditions across the earth. ...
Finance studies and addresses the ways in which individuals, businesses and organizations raise, allocate and use monetary resources over time, taking into account the risks entailed in their projects. ...
Operations research, operational research, or simply OR, is the use of mathematical models, statistics and algorithms to aid in decision-making. ...
Economic anthropology is a linking between economic and social life. ...
Public finance (government finance) is the field of economics that deals with budgeting the revenues and expenditures of a public sector entity, usually government. ...
Family and consumer sciences, or home economics, is an academic discipline concerning consumer science, nutrition, cooking, parenting, interior decoration, textiles, gardening, and other subjects related to home management. ...
Neuroeconomics combines neuroscience, economics, and psychology to study how we make choices. ...
The movement for Post-Autistic Economics was born through the work of Sorbonne economist Bernard Guerrien. ...
Steve Keen is a senior lecturer in economics in the University of Western Sydney. ...
Theoretical Economist researching complexity, complex systems, nonlinear feedback, the boom and bust cycle of business and economic competition. ...
This article needs cleanup. ...
This article is about communism as a form of society built around a gift economy, as an ideology that advocates that form of society, and as a popular movement. ...
Capitalism has been defined in various ways (see q:Capitalism). ...
Coordinatorism is an economic system in which control is held neither by people who own capital, nor by the workers, but instead is held by an intervening class of coordinators, typically in the roles of managers, administrators, engineers, university intellectuals, doctors, lawyers. ...
Deregulation is the process by which governments remove selected regulations on business in order to (in theory) encourage the efficient operation of markets. ...
An economic indicator (or business indicator) is a statistic about the economy. ...
In political economy, economics, and sociology, exploitation usually does not include simple theft, since the latter is not a persistent economic or social relationship, as when a pimp exploits his prostitute. ...
Freiwirtschaft (German for free economy) is an economic doctrine founded by Silvio Gesell. ...
The labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory in economics and political economy concerning a market-oriented society: the theory equates the value of an exchangeable good or service (i. ...
Laissez-faire is short for laissez faire, laissez passer, a French phrase meaning to let things alone, let them pass. First used by the eighteenth century Physiocrats as an injunction against government interference with trade, it is now used as a synonym for strict free market economics. ...
A market economy is a term used to describe an economy where economic decisions, such as pricing of goods and services, are made in a decentralized manner by the economys participants and manifested by trade. ...
Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century German philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ...
Mutualism is an economic theory originally developed by Pierre Joseph Proudhon. ...
Nationalization is the act of taking assets into state ownership. ...
Natural capitalism is a set of trends and economic reforms to reward energy and material efficiency - and remove professional standards and accounting conventions that prevent such efficiencies. ...
The network effect causes a good or service to have a value to a potential customer dependent on the number of customers already owning that good or using that service. ...
Participatory economics, or parecon, a participatory economics system proposed as an alternative to contemporary capitalism and also an alternative to centrally planned socialism or coordinatorism, emerged from the work of the radical theorist Michael Albert and of the radical economist Robin Hahnel, beginning in the 1980s and 1990s. ...
A planned economy is an economic system in which economic decisions are made by centralized planners who determine what sorts of goods and services to produce and how they are to be priced and allocated, and may include state ownership of the means of production. ...
Privatization (sometimes privatisation, denationalization, or, especially in India, disinvestment) is the process of transferring property, from public ownership to private ownership and/or transferring the management of a service or activity from the government to the private sector. ...
Real wages. ...
For information on mainstream political parties using the term Socialist, see Social democracy and Democratic socialism,For the governments of the USSR, the PRC, and others, see: Communist state, Other variants of Socialism include Marxism, Communism, and Libertarian Socialism. ...
Socialist economics is a term which refers in its descriptive sense to the economic effects of nations with large state sectors where the government directs the kind and nature of production. ...
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Welfare has four main meanings. ...
Finding related topics The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (Swe. ...
This is a list of topics which are relevant to Accountancy. ...
See business ethics or political economy for an overview. ...
Commercial law an overview Adhesion contract Blue law Civil law notary Contracts Consideration Duress Breach of contract Remedy Lien Legal entity Corporate law Corporation Incorporation Delaware corporation (US) Limited liability company Fiduciary Partnership Agency Escrow Trustee of a trust or executor of an estate; see also trusts and estates Charitable...
Economic geography provides an overview of economic geography topics. ...
This article presents possible categorizations of economic systems. ...
This is a list of economic consultancies, cultural consultancies and think tanks Well-known think tanks Australia The Australia Institute (TAI) Australia-Japan Research Center (AJRC) Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA) Brisbane Institute Centre for Independent Studies Institute of Public Affairs (Australia) Social Policy Research Centre at the University...
This aims to be a complete list of the articles on economics. ...
This is an alphabetical list of well-known economists. ...
What follows is a list of over 250 Wikipedia articles on finance topics. ...
Organizational studies - an overview Organizational development Management development Mentoring Coaching Job rotation Professional development Upward feedback Executive education Supervisory training leadership development leadership talent identification and management individual development planning 360 degree feedback succession planning Skills management performance improvement process improvement job enrichment Training & Development managing change and also change...
Management information systems an overview E-business Intranet strategies Database management system Data warehousing Data mining Document warehousing Customer relationship management (CRM) Sales force management system Enterprise resource planning (ERP) Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS) Business performance management Project management software Integration management Middleware Groupware and collaborative systems RSA Computer...
International trade - an overview Absolute advantage Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights APEC Autarky Balance of trade barter Bimetallism Bretton Woods system British timber trade Cash crop Comparative advantage Continental trading bloc Cost, insurance and freight Currency Customs union CAFTA CEFTA David Ricardo European Union Exchange rate...
This is a list of articles on general management and strategic management topics. ...
This is a list of over 200 articles on marketing topics. ...
Manufacturing and manufacturing systems manufacturing factory Craft system English system of manufacturing American system of manufacturing Mass production Batch production Just in time manufacturing Toyota Production System Lean manufacturing Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) Mass customization Theories of production Taylorism Fordism Theory of constraints Productivity Productivity benchmarking cost accounting experience curve...
Macroeconomics The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776. ...
The following list of scholarly journals in economics is not comprehensive, as there are hundreds currently published. ...
This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedias deletion policy. ...
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