An economic taxonomy is a system of classification of economic activity, including products, companies and industries. Some economists believe that the study of economic policy demands the use of a taxonomic/classificatory approach.

Industry taxonomies

Industry taxonomies include international, regional and national taxonomies and proprietary taxonomies.

Official statistics taxonomies

The international and national taxonomies are used by official statistical agencies.

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

provide its

International Standard Industrial Classification The International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC) is a United Nations industry classification system. Wide use has been made of ISIC in classifying data according to kind of economic activity in the fields of em ...

(ISIC) as a base for establishing regional taxonomies: * North America

North American Industry Classification System The North American Industry Classification System or NAICS () is a industry classification, classification of business establishments by type of economic activity (the process of production). It is used by governments and business in Canada, Mexic ...

(NAICS) ** United States Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) * Europe Statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE) ** United Kingdom Standard Industrial Classification of Economic Activities ** Russian Economic Activities Classification System (OKVED)

Proprietary taxonomies

The proprietary taxonomies are often used in the

financial services Financial services are service (economics), economic services tied to finance provided by financial institutions. Financial services encompass a broad range of tertiary sector of the economy, service sector activities, especially as concerns finan ...

industry to group similar

investment vehicle An investment fund is a way of investing money alongside other investors in order to benefit from the inherent advantages of working as part of a group such as reducing the risks of the investment by a significant percentage. These advantages inc ...

s and to construct sectorial

stock market indices In finance, a stock index, or stock market index, is an index that measures the performance of a stock market, or of a subset of a stock market. It helps investors compare current stock price levels with past prices to calculate market perfor ...

. Proprietary taxonomies include the

Global Industry Classification Standard The Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) is an industry taxonomy developed in 1999 by MSCI and Standard & Poor's (S&P) for use by the global financial community. The GICS structure consists of 11 sectors, 25 industry groups, 74 industrie ...

(GICS), the

Industry Classification Benchmark The Industry Classification Benchmark (ICB) is an industry classification taxonomy launched by Dow Jones and FTSE in 2005 and now used by FTSE International and STOXX. It is used to segregate markets into sectors within the macroeconomy. The ICB ...

(ICB) and

The Refinitiv Business Classification The Refinitiv Business Classification (TRBC) is an industry classification of global companies. It was developed by the Reuters Group under the name Reuters Business Sector Scheme (RBSS), was rebranded to Thomson Reuters Business Classification ( ...

(TRBC).

Pavitt's Taxonomy Pavitt's Taxonomy categorizes mostly large industrial firms along trajectories of technological change according to sources of technology, requirements of the users, and appropriability regime (Pavitt 1984). The taxonomy aims to classify innovation ...

classifies firms by their principal sources of innovation.

MasterFormat MasterFormat is a standard for organizing specifications and other written information for commercial and institutional building projects in the U.S. and Canada. Sometimes referred to as the "Dewey Decimal System" of building construction, MasterFo ...

provides a taxonomy for organizing construction projects with the primary unit of differentiation consisting of a binary fail/no-fail tag. The majority of the users of MasterFormat fall into the first category.

Product taxonomy

Product classification or product taxonomy organizes products for a variety of purposes.

Other taxonomies

Other taxonomies include classifications of trademarks, jobs (occupations), patents, publications in the field of economy, standards, customs classification.

References