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Economics
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Economics Definition:
American Heritage Dictionary
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Definition |
-
(used with a sing. verb) The social
science that deals with the production,
distribution, and consumption of
goods and services and with the
theory and management of economies
or economic systems.
-
(used with a sing. or pl. verb)
Economic matters, especially relevant
financial considerations: “Economics
are slowly killing the family farm”
(Christian Science Monitor).
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Source and
Copy Right Information:
Dictionary
definition of economics
The American Heritage Dictionary
of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright 2004, 2000 by
Houghton Mifflin Company. Published
by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights
reserved.
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Economics : Barron's
Finance and Investment Terms
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Definition |
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Economics: Study of the economy.
Classic economics concentrates on how
the forces of supply and demand allocate
scarce product and service resources.
Macroeconomics studies a nation
or the world's economy as a whole, using
data about inflation, unemployment and
industrial production to understand
the past and predict the future.
Microeconomics studies the behavior
of specific sectors of the economy,
such as companies, industries, or households.
Over the years, various schools of economic
thought have gained prominence, including
Keynesian Economics, Monetarism
and
Supply-Side Economics.
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Source and
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Finance
and Investment Terms information about
economics
Dictionary of Finance and Investment
Terms. Copyright 2006 by
Barron's Educational Series, Inc.
All rights reserved.
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Economics: Word
Net
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Definition |
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the branch of social science that deals
with the production and distribution
and consumption of goods and services
and their management Synonyms:
economic science,
political economy
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Source and
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WordNet
information about economics.
WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright 2001
by Princeton University. All rights
reserved.
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Economics : Encyclopedia
of Business
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Definition
and Explanation |
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Economics is often described as a body
of knowledge or study that discusses
how a society tries to solve the human
problems of unlimited wants and scarce
resources. Because economics is associated
with human behavior, the study of economics
is classified as a social science. Because
economics deals with human problems,
it cannot be an exact science and one
can easily find differing views and
descriptions of economics. In this discussion,
the focus is an overview of the elements
that constitute the study of economics,
that is, wants, needs, scarcity, resources,
goods and services, economic choice,
and the laws of supply and demand.
Every person is involved with making
economic decisions every day of his
or her life. This occurs when one decides
whether to cook a meal at home or go
to a restaurant to eat, or when one
decides between purchasing a new luxury
car or a low-priced pickup truck. People
make economic decisions when they decide
whether to rent or purchase housing
or where they should attend college.
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Encyclopedia
of Business information about economics
Encyclopedia of Business
and Finance. Copyright 2001 by
The Gale Group, Inc. All rights
reserved.
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Adam Smith, generally
regarded
as the Father of
Economics,
author of An
Inquiry into the Nature and
Causes of the Wealth of
Nations, commonly known
as
The Wealth of Nations.
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Economics : Britannica
Concise Encyclopedia
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Definition |
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Social science that analyzes and describes
the consequences of choices made concerning
scarce productive resources. Economics
is the study of how individuals and
societies choose to employ those resources:
what goods and services will be produced,
how they will be produced, and how they
will be distributed among the members
of society. Economics is customarily
divided into
microeconomics and
macroeconomics. Of major concern
to macroeconomists are the rate of
economic growth, the
inflation rate, and the rate of
unemployment. Specialized areas
of economic investigation attempt to
answer questions on a variety of economic
activity; they include agricultural
economics,
economic development, economic history,
environmental economics, industrial
organization, international trade,
labour economics,
money supply and banking, public
finance, urban economics, and
welfare economics. Specialists in
mathematical economics and
econometrics provide tools used
by all economists. The areas of investigation
in economics overlap with many other
disciplines, notably history,
mathematics,
political science, and
sociology.
For more information on
economics, visit
Britannica.com.
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Britannica
information about economics
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia.
2006
Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. All
rights reserved.
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Economics : Encyclopedia
of American History
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Definition |
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Economics studies
human welfare in terms of the production,
distribution, and consumption of goods
and services. While there is a considerable
body of ancient and medieval thought
on economic questions, the discipline
of political economy only took shape
in the early modern period. Some prominent
schools of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries were Cameralism (Germany),
Mercantilism (Britain), and Physiocracy
(France). Classical political economy,
launched by Adam Smith's Wealth of
Nations (1776), dominated the discipline
for more than one hundred years. American
economics drew on all of these sources,
but it did not forge its own identity
until the end of the nineteenth century,
and it did not attain its current global
hegemony until after World War II. This
was as much due to the sheer number
of active economists as to the brilliance
of Paul Samuelson, Milton Friedman,
and Kenneth Arrow, among others. Prior
to 1900, the American community of economists
had largely been perceived, both from
within and from abroad, as a relative
backwater. The United States did not
produce a theorist to rival the likes
of Adam Smith (1723-1790), David Ricardo
(1772-1823), or Karl Marx (1818-1883).
Economics studies
human welfare in terms of the production,
distribution, and consumption of goods
and services. While there is a considerable
body of ancient and medieval thought
on economic questions, the discipline
of political economy only took shape
in the early modern period. Some prominent
schools of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries were Cameralism (Germany),
Mercantilism (Britain), and Physiocracy
(France). Classical political economy,
launched by Adam Smith's Wealth of
Nations (1776), dominated the discipline
for more than one hundred years. American
economics drew on all of these sources,
but it did not forge its own identity
until the end of the nineteenth century,
and it did not attain its current global
hegemony until after World War II. This
was as much due to the sheer number
of active economists as to the brilliance
of Paul Samuelson, Milton Friedman,
and Kenneth Arrow, among others. Prior
to 1900, the American community of economists
had largely been perceived, both from
within and from abroad, as a relative
backwater. The United States did not
produce a theorist to rival the likes
of Adam Smith (1723-1790), David Ricardo
(1772-1823), or Karl Marx (1818-1883).
Several factors in
American economic and intellectual history
help explain this fact. First, the presence
of a large slave economy before the
Civil War resulted in a concentrated
effort to weigh the arguments for and
against free labor. The landmark study
in American economic history of the
last century, Robert Fogel and Stanley
Engerman's Time on the Cross
(1974), speaks to this unfortunate legacy.
Second, the belated onset of industrialization
(in 1860, 80 percent of the population
was still rural), and the founding of
many land-grant colleges with the Morrill
Act of 1862 resulted in the emergence
of a field of specialization that endures
to this day: agricultural or land economics.
Even in the interwar years, the Bureau
of Agricultural Economics was a major
center of research in the field. Third,
American federalism, by decentralizing
the management of money and credit,
had direct and arguably dire consequences
for the development of banking and capital
accumulation. Persistent debates on
the merits of paper currency can be
traced from the latter half of the eighteenth
century right up to 1971, when American
fiat money replaced the gold standard
once and for all.
The relatively high
standard of living and the massive wave
of immigration during the latter part
of the nineteenth century might also
have played a part in the diminished
role of socialist thinking. A liberal
ideology coupled with the absence of
an aristocracy meant that socialism
never became as rooted in America as
in Europe. In the few instances that
it did, it tended to be of the more
innocuous variety, such as Robert Owen's
(1771-1858) 1825 settlement of New Harmony,
Indiana, or Richard T. Ely's (1854-1943)
Christian socialism. The most popular
reform movement in late-nineteenth-century
economics was inspired by Henry George's
(1839-1897) Progress and Poverty
(1879), which argued for a single tax
on land. Economic theory tended then
as now toward liberalism if not libertarianism,
with its deeply entrenched respect for
individual rights, market forces, and
the diminished role of the government.
What probably most
explains the form and content of American
economics is its resistance to the influence
of other disciplines. Because of the
sheer size of the economics profession
(there are some 22,000 registered members
of the American Economic Association,
and that by no means exhausts the number),
it tends to be very inward-looking.
Not since before World War II have economists
eagerly borrowed from the other sciences.
Even prewar economists were more likely
to assimilate concepts and methods from
physics and biology than from sociology
or psychology. Instead, "economic imperialists"
such as Gary Becker take topics that
have traditionally been in other social
sciences, such as voting, crime, marriage,
and the family, and model them in terms
of utility maximization.
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Source and
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Encyclopedia
of American History information about
economics 2006 through
a partnership of
Answers Corporation. All rights
reserved.
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Economics : Columbia
University Press Encyclopedia
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Definition |
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Economics,
study of how human beings allocate scarce
resources to produce various commodities
and how those commodities are distributed
for consumption among the people in
society (see
distribution). The essence of economics
lies in the fact that resources are
scarce, or at least limited, and that
not all human needs and desires can
be met. How to distribute these resources
in the most efficient and equitable
way is a principal concern of economists.
The field of economics has undergone
a remarkable expansion in the 20th cent.
as the world economy has grown increasingly
large and complex. Today, economists
are employed in large numbers in private
industry, government, and higher education
(see
economic planning). Many subjects,
such as political science and sociology,
which were once regarded as part of
the study of economics, have today become
separate disciplines, although the study
of any one generally implies a working
knowledge of the others.
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Encyclopedia
information about economics.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia,
Sixth Edition Copyright 2003,
Columbia University Press. Licensed
from Columbia University Press. All
rights reserved.
www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/
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Economics : Houghton
Mifflin Company
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Definition |
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The science that deals with the production,
distribution, and consumption of
commodities.
Economics is generally understood to
concern behavior that, given the scarcity
of means, arises to achieve certain
ends. When scarcity ceases, conventional
economic theory may no longer be applicable.
(See
affluent society.)
Economics is sometimes referred to as
the dismal science.
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Source and
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Economics
information about economics.
The New Dictionary of Cultural
Literacy, Third Edition Edited by
E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and
James Trefil. Copyright 2002 by
Houghton Mifflin Company. Published
by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved.
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Economics: Word
Tutor
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Definition |
IN BRIEF: n. -
The branch of social science that deals
with the production and distribution
and consumption of goods and services
and their management.
One of the soundest rules to remember
when making forecasts in the field of
economics is that whatever is to happen
is happening already. Sylvia Porter
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Source and
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Word
Tutor information about economics
Copyright 2004-present
by
eSpindle Learning, a 501(c) nonprofit
organization. All rights reserved. eSpindle
provides personalized spelling and vocabulary
tutoring online;
free trial.
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Economics: Wikipedia
[Webmaster's Choice]
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Definition
and Explaination |
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Economics, as a
social science, studies the
production,
distribution, and
consumption of resources. The word
"economics" is from the
Greek words
οἶκος
[oikos], meaning "family, household,
estate," and νόμος [nomos],
or "custom, law," and hence literally
means "household management" or "management
of the state." An
economist is a person using economic
concepts and data in the course of employment.
The field may be divided in several
different ways, most popularly
microeconomics (at the level of
individual choices) vs
macroeconomics (aggregate results).
It may also be divided in
positive (descriptive) vs.
normative,
mainstream vs.
heterodox, and by subfield. Economics
has many direct applications in business,
personal finance, and government. Theories
developed as a part of economic theory
have also been applied to non-monetary
choices in fields as diverse as criminal
behavior, scientific research, death,
politics, health, education, family,
dating, etc. This is allowed because
economics is fundamentally about human
decision making.
There has been an increasing trend for
ideas and methods from economics to
be applied in wider contexts. Economic
analysis focuses on decision making,
and has been applied, with varying degrees
of success, to various fields where
people are faced with alternatives -
education,
marriage,
health,
law,
crime,
war, and
religion. This has sometimes been
described as economic imperialism by
critics.
Gary Becker at the University of
Chicago was one of the important pioneers
in this imperialistic endeavor. In a
collection of his early influential
articles, he advanced the view that
economics is not to be defined by its
subject matters, but should be defined
as an approach of explaining human behaviors.
Many mainstream economists feel that
the combination of rigorous theory and
empirical data ultimately gives the
best understanding of real-world phenomena.
Towards this end, economics has undergone
a massive formalization of its ideas,
concepts and methods - according to
critics, sometimes to the detriment
of its real-world relevance. This creates
a tension in the profession on what
economists should do. The traditional
Chicago School, with its emphasis on
economics being an empirical science
aimed at explaining real-world phenomena,
has insisted on the powerfulness of
price theory as the tool of analysis.
On the other hand, some economic theorists
have formed the view that a consistent
economic theory may be useful even if
at present no real world economy bears
out its prediction.
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information about economics.
This article is licensed under
the
GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the
Wikipedia article "Economics".
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