The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to economics:

Economics Economics () is the 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 anal ...

– analyzes the production,

distribution Distribution may refer to: Mathematics * Distribution (mathematics), generalized functions used to formulate solutions of partial differential equations *Probability distribution, the probability of a particular value or value range of a vari ...

, and consumption of

goods In economics, goods are items that satisfy human wants and provide utility, for example, to a consumer making a purchase of a satisfying product. A common distinction is made between goods which are transferable, and services, which are not ...

and services. It aims to explain how economies work and how economic agents interact.

Description of economics

Economics can be described as all of the following: *

Academic discipline An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...

– body of knowledge given to, or received by, a disciple (

student A student is a person enrolled in a school or other educational institution. In the United Kingdom and most commonwealth countries, a "student" attends a secondary school or higher (e.g., college or university); those in primary or elementa ...

); a branch or sphere of knowledge, or field of study, that an individual has chosen to specialize in. * Field of science – widely recognized category of specialized expertise within science, and typically embodies its own terminology and nomenclature. Such a field will usually be represented by one or more scientific journals, where peer-reviewed research is published. There are many economics-related scientific journals. *

Social science Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of s ...

– field of academic scholarship that explores aspects of human society.

Branches of economics

Macroeconomics Macroeconomics (from the Greek prefix ''makro-'' meaning "large" + ''economics'') is a branch of economics dealing with performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. For example, using interest rates, taxes, and ...

– branch of economics dealing with the performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole, rather than individual markets. *

Microeconomics Microeconomics is a branch of mainstream economics that studies the behavior of individuals and firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources and the interactions among these individuals and firms. Microeconomics fo ...

– branch of economics that studies the behavior of individuals and firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of limited resources.

Subdisciplines of economics

Agricultural economics Agricultural economics is an applied field of economics concerned with the application of economic theory in optimizing the production and distribution of food and Natural fiber, fiber products. Agricultural economics began as a branch of econom ...

Attention economics Attention economics is an approach to the Information management, management of information that treats human attention as a scarce commodity and applies economic theory to solve various information management problems. According to Matthew Craw ...

Behavioral economics Behavioral economics studies the effects of psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors on the decisions of individuals or institutions, such as how those decisions vary from those implied by classical economic theory. ...

Classical economics Classical economics, classical political economy, or Smithian economics is a school of thought in political economy that flourished, primarily in Britain, in the late 18th and early-to-mid 19th century. Its main thinkers are held to be Adam S ...

* Comparative economic systems *

Contract theory From a legal point of view, a contract is an institutional arrangement for the way in which resources flow, which defines the various relationships between the parties to a transaction or limits the rights and obligations of the parties. From an ...

* Cultural economics *

Demographic economics Demographic economics or population economics is the application of economic analysis to demography, the study of human populations, including size, growth, density, distribution, and vital statistics. Aspects Aspects of the subject include * m ...

Development economics Development economics is a branch of economics which deals with economic aspects of the development process in low- and middle- income countries. Its focus is not only on methods of promoting economic development, economic growth and structural ...

* Ecological economics *

Econometrics Econometrics is the application of statistical methods to economic data in order to give empirical content to economic relationships. M. Hashem Pesaran (1987). "Econometrics," '' The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics'', v. 2, p. 8 p. ...

* Economic anthropology *

Economic development In the economics study of the public sector, economic and social development is the process by which the economic well-being and quality of life of a nation, region, local community, or an individual are improved according to targeted goals and ...

Economic geography Economic geography is the subfield of human geography which studies economic activity and factors affecting them. It can also be considered a subfield or method in economics. There are four branches of economic geography. There is, primary sect ...

Economic history Economic history is the academic learning of economies or economic events of the past. Research is conducted using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and the application of economic theory to historical situations and i ...

* Economic sociology * Economics of marriage * Education economics *

Energy economics Energy economics is a broad scientific subject area which includes topics related to supply and use of energy in societies. Considering the cost of energy services and associated value gives economic meaning to the efficiency at which energ ...

* Engineering economics *

Entrepreneurial economics Entrepreneurial economics is the study of the entrepreneur and entrepreneurship within the economy. The accumulation of factors of production per se does not explain economic development. They are necessary factors of production, but they are not s ...

* Environmental economics *

Family economics Family economics applies economic concepts such as production, division of labor, distribution, and decision making to the family. It is used to explain outcomes unique to family—such as marriage, the decision to have children, fertility, po ...

Feminist economics Feminist economics is the critical study of economics and economies, with a focus on gender-aware and inclusive economic inquiry and policy analysis. Feminist economic researchers include academics, activists, policy theorists, and practitio ...

Financial economics Financial economics, also known as finance, is the branch of economics characterized by a "concentration on monetary activities", in which "money of one type or another is likely to appear on ''both sides'' of a trade". William F. Sharpe"Financia ...

* Georgism * Green economics *

Health economics Health economics is a branch of economics concerned with issues related to efficiency, effectiveness, value and behavior in the production and consumption of health and healthcare. Health economics is important in determining how to improv ...

Industrial organization In economics, industrial organization is a field that builds on the theory of the firm by examining the structure of (and, therefore, the boundaries between) firms and markets. Industrial organization adds real-world complications to the perf ...

Information economics Information economics or the economics of information is the branch of microeconomics that studies how information and information systems affect an economy and economic decisions. One application considers information embodied in certain types ...

* International economics *

Institutional economics Institutional economics focuses on understanding the role of the evolutionary process and the role of institutions in shaping economic behavior. Its original focus lay in Thorstein Veblen's instinct-oriented dichotomy between technology on the ...

* Labor economics *

Law and economics Law and economics, or economic analysis of law, is the application of microeconomic theory to the analysis of law, which emerged primarily from scholars of the Chicago school of economics. Economic concepts are used to explain the effects of law ...

Managerial economics Managerial economics is a branch of economics involving the application of economic methods in the managerial decision-making process.• Trefor Jones (2004). ''Business Economics and Managerial Decision Making'', WileyDescriptionand chapter-pre ...

Mathematical economics Mathematical economics is the application of mathematical methods to represent theories and analyze problems in economics. Often, these applied methods are beyond simple geometry, and may include differential and integral calculus, difference ...

Monetary economics Monetary economics is the branch of economics that studies the different competing theories of money: it provides a framework for analyzing money and considers its functions (such as medium of exchange, store of value and unit of account), and ...

Public finance Public finance is the study of the role of the government in the economy. It is the branch of economics that assesses the government revenue and government expenditure of the public authorities and the adjustment of one or the other to achiev ...

Public economics Public economics ''(or economics of the public sector)'' is the study of government policy through the lens of economic efficiency and equity. Public economics builds on the theory of welfare economics and is ultimately used as a tool to improve ...

Real estate economics Real estate economics is the application of economic techniques to real estate markets. It tries to describe, explain, and predict patterns of prices, supply, and demand. The closely related field of housing economics is narrower in scope, con ...

* Regional economics * Regional science *

Resource economics Natural resource economics deals with the supply, demand, and allocation of the Earth's natural resources. One main objective of natural resource economics is to better understand the role of natural resources in the economy in order to deve ...

Rural economics Rural economics is the study of rural economies. Rural economies include both agricultural and non-agricultural industries, so rural economics has broader concerns than agricultural economics which focus more on food systems. Rural development ...

* Socialist economics * Urban economics *

Welfare economics Welfare economics is a branch of economics that uses microeconomic techniques to evaluate well-being (welfare) at the aggregate (economy-wide) level. Attempting to apply the principles of welfare economics gives rise to the field of public ec ...

Methodologies or approaches

Behavioural economics Behavioral economics studies the effects of psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors on the decisions of individuals or institutions, such as how those decisions vary from those implied by classical economic theory. ...

* Computational economics *

* Evolutionary economics * Experimental economics * Praxeology (used by the

Austrian School The Austrian School is a heterodox school of economic thought that advocates strict adherence to methodological individualism, the concept that social phenomena result exclusively from the motivations and actions of individuals. Austrian scho ...

) *

Social psychology Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the ...

Multidisciplinary fields involving economics

* Bioeconomics *

Constitutional economics Constitutional economics is a research program in economics and constitutionalism that has been described as explaining the choice "of alternative sets of legal-institutional-constitutional rules that constrain the choices and activities of econo ...

Econophysics Econophysics is a heterodox interdisciplinary research field, applying theories and methods originally developed by physicists in order to solve problems in economics, usually those including uncertainty or stochastic processes and nonlinear dynam ...

Institutionalist political economy Institutionalist political economy, also known as institutional political economy or IPE, refers to a body of political economy, thought to stem from the works of institutionalists such as Thorstein Veblen, John Commons, Wesley Mitchell and John D ...

Neuroeconomics Neuroeconomics is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to explain human decision-making, the ability to process multiple alternatives and to follow through on a plan of action. It studies how economic behavior can shape our understanding of t ...

Political economy Political economy is the study of how economic systems (e.g. markets and national economies) and political systems (e.g. law, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied phenomena within the discipline are systems such as labour ...

Socioeconomics Socioeconomics (also known as social economics) is the social science that studies how economic activity affects and is shaped by social processes. In general it analyzes how modern societies progress, stagnate, or regress because of their l ...

* Thermoeconomics *

Transport economics Transport economics is a branch of economics founded in 1959 by American economist John R. Meyer that deals with the allocation of resources within the transport sector. It has strong links to civil engineering. Transport economics differs from ...

Types of economies

Economy An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with th ...

–

system A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and express ...

of human activities related to the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of

and services of a country or other area.

Economies, by political & social ideological structure

* Economic ideology ** Capitalist economy **

Planned economy A planned economy is a type of economic system where investment, production and the allocation of capital goods takes place according to economy-wide economic plans and production plans. A planned economy may use centralized, decentralized, ...

Consumer economy A consumer economy describes an economy driven by consumer spending as a percent of its gross domestic product, as opposed to the other major components of GDP (gross private domestic investment, government spending, and imports netted against expo ...

(

consumerism Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. With the Industrial Revolution, but particularly in the 20th century, mass production led to overproduction—the su ...

) ** Corporate economy **

Fascist economy Historians and other scholars disagree on the question of whether a specifically fascist type of economic policy can be said to exist. David Baker argues that there is an identifiable economic system in fascism that is distinct from those advo ...

Laissez-faire ''Laissez-faire'' ( ; from french: laissez faire , ) is an economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies) deriving from special interest groups ...

Mercantilism Mercantilism is an economic policy that is designed to maximize the exports and minimize the imports for an economy. It promotes imperialism, colonialism, tariffs and subsidies on traded goods to achieve that goal. The policy aims to reduce ...

** Natural economy ** Primitive communism ** Social market economy ** Socialist economy

Economies, by scope

Anglo-Saxon economy The Anglo-Saxon model (so called because it is practiced in Anglosphere countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Ireland is a capitalist model that emerged in the 1970s based on the Chicago sch ...

* American School * Hunter-gatherer economy * Information economy * New industrial economy *

Palace economy A palace economy or redistribution economy is a system of economic organization in which a substantial share of the wealth flows into the control of a centralized administration, the palace, and out from there to the general population. In turn ...

Plantation economy A plantation economy is an economy based on agricultural mass production, usually of a few commodity crops, grown on large farms worked by laborers or slaves. The properties are called plantations. Plantation economies rely on the export of cash ...

Token economy A token economy is a system of contingency management based on the systematic reinforcement of target behavior. The reinforcers are symbols or tokens that can be exchanged for other reinforcers. A token economy is based on the principles of op ...

Traditional economy A traditional economic system is based on customs, history and time-honored beliefs. A traditional economy is an economic system in which traditions, customs, and beliefs help shape the goods and services the economy produces, as well as the rul ...

Transition economy A transition economy or transitional economy is an economy which is changing from a centrally planned economy to a market economy. Transition economies undergo a set of structural transformations intended to develop market-based institutions. ...

World economy The world economy or global economy is the economy of all humans of the world, referring to the global economic system, which includes all economic activities which are conducted both within and between nations, including production, consumptio ...

Economies, by regulation

* Closed economy *

Dual economy A dual economy is the existence of two separate economic sectors within one country, divided by different levels of development, technology, and different patterns of demand. The concept was originally created by Julius Herman Boeke to describe th ...

Gift economy A gift economy or gift culture is a system of exchange where Anthropological theories of value, valuables are not sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. Social norms and customs govern giving a gift ...

Informal economy An informal economy (informal sector or grey economy) is the part of any economy that is neither taxed nor monitored by any form of government. Although the informal sector makes up a significant portion of the economies in developing countri ...

Market economy A market economy is an economic system in which the decisions regarding investment, production and distribution to the consumers are guided by the price signals created by the forces of supply and demand, where all suppliers and consumers ...

* Mixed economy * Open economy *

Participatory economy Participatory economics, often abbreviated Parecon, is an economic system based on participatory decision making as the primary economic mechanism for allocation in society. In the system, the say in decision-making is proportional to the impa ...

Subsistence economy A subsistence economy is an economy directed to basic subsistence (the provision of food, clothing, shelter) rather than to the market. Henceforth, "subsistence" is understood as supporting oneself at a minimum level. Often, the subsistence econo ...

* Underground economy *

Virtual economy A virtual economy (or sometimes synthetic economy) is an emergence, emergent economics, economy existing in a virtual world, usually exchanging virtual goods in the context of an online game, particularly in massively multiplayer online games (M ...

Economic elements

Economic activities

Business Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or buying and selling products (such as goods and services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for profit." Having a business name does not separ ...

Business cycle Business cycles are intervals of expansion followed by recession in economic activity. These changes have implications for the welfare of the broad population as well as for private institutions. Typically business cycles are measured by examin ...

Collective action Collective action refers to action taken together by a group of people whose goal is to enhance their condition and achieve a common objective. It is a term that has formulations and theories in many areas of the social sciences including psyc ...

Commerce Commerce is the large-scale organized system of activities, functions, procedures and institutions directly and indirectly related to the exchange (buying and selling) of goods and services among two or more parties within local, regional, natio ...

Competition Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss (an example of which is a zero-sum game). Competition can arise between entities such as organisms, ind ...

* Consumption *

Distribution Distribution may refer to: Mathematics * Distribution (mathematics), generalized functions used to formulate solutions of partial differential equations *Probability distribution, the probability of a particular value or value range of a vari ...

Employment Employment is a relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services. Usually based on a contract, one party, the employer, which might be a corporation, a not-for-profit organization, a co-operative, or any o ...

Entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values t ...

Export An export in international trade is a good produced in one country that is sold into another country or a service provided in one country for a national or resident of another country. The seller of such goods or the service provider is a ...

Finance Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of f ...

Government spending Government spending or expenditure includes all government consumption, investment, and transfer payments. In national income accounting, the acquisition by governments of goods and services for current use, to directly satisfy the individual ...

Import An import is the receiving country in an export from the sending country. Importation and exportation are the defining financial transactions of international trade. In international trade, the importation and exportation of goods are limited ...

Investment Investment is the dedication of money to purchase of an asset to attain an increase in value over a period of time. Investment requires a sacrifice of some present asset, such as time, money, or effort. In finance, the purpose of investing is ...

Mergers and acquisitions Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of companies, other business organizations, or their operating units are transferred to or consolidated with another company or business organization. As an aspec ...

Pricing Pricing is the process whereby a business sets the price at which it will sell its products and services, and may be part of the business's marketing plan. In setting prices, the business will take into account the price at which it could acq ...

** Geographical pricing * Production *

Trade Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market. An early form of trade, barter, saw the direct exc ...

Balance of trade The balance of trade, commercial balance, or net exports (sometimes symbolized as NX), is the difference between the monetary value of a nation's exports and imports over a certain time period. Sometimes a distinction is made between a balance ...

Fair trade Fair trade is an arrangement designed to help producers in developing countries achieve sustainable and equitable trade relationships. The fair trade movement combines the payment of higher prices to exporters with improved social and envir ...

Free trade Free trade is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. It can also be understood as the free market idea applied to international trade. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold econ ...

International trade International trade is the exchange of capital, goods, and services across international borders or territories because there is a need or want of goods or services. (see: World economy) In most countries, such trade represents a significa ...

Safe trade {{Unreferenced, date=November 2007 ''Safe trade'' is a slogan advocated by Greenpeace in its desire to " green" the World Trade Organization and the Doha Development Round. It is designed to compete with "free trade" as a concept. Safe trade i ...

** Tax, tariff and trade **

Terms of trade The terms of trade (TOT) is the relative price of exports in terms of imports and is defined as the ratio of export prices to import prices. It can be interpreted as the amount of import goods an economy can purchase per unit of export goods. An i ...

** Trade bloc **

Trade pact A trade agreement (also known as trade pact) is a wide-ranging taxes, tariff and trade treaty that often includes investment guarantees. It exists when two or more countries agree on terms that help them trade with each other. The most common tr ...

** Trader Ethic

Economic forces

Aggregate demand In macroeconomics, aggregate demand (AD) or domestic final demand (DFD) is the total demand for final goods and services in an economy at a given time. It is often called effective demand, though at other times this term is distinguished. This is ...

Aggregate supply In economics, aggregate supply (AS) or domestic final supply (DFS) is the total supply of goods and services that firms in a national economy plan on selling during a specific time period. It is the total amount of goods and services that fir ...

Deflation In economics, deflation is a decrease in the general price level of goods and services. Deflation occurs when the inflation rate falls below 0% (a negative inflation rate). Inflation reduces the value of currency over time, but sudden deflatio ...

* Economic activity (see above) * Economies of agglomeration *

Economies of scale In microeconomics, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, and are typically measured by the amount of output produced per unit of time. A decrease in cost per unit of output enables ...

* Economies of scope *

Incentive In general, incentives are anything that persuade a person to alter their behaviour. It is emphasised that incentives matter by the basic law of economists and the laws of behaviour, which state that higher incentives amount to greater levels of ...

Inflation In economics, inflation is an increase in the general price level of goods and services in an economy. When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, inflation corresponds to a reduct ...

Hyperinflation In economics, hyperinflation is a very high and typically accelerating inflation. It quickly erodes the real value of the local currency, as the prices of all goods increase. This causes people to minimize their holdings in that currency as t ...

Invisible hand The invisible hand is a metaphor used by the British moral philosopher Adam Smith that describes the unintended greater social benefits and public good brought about by individuals acting in their own self-interests. Smith originally mention ...

Preference In psychology, economics and philosophy, preference is a technical term usually used in relation to choosing between alternatives. For example, someone prefers A over B if they would rather choose A than B. Preferences are central to decision th ...

Profit motive In economics, the profit motive is the motivation of firms that operate so as to maximize their profits. Mainstream microeconomic theory posits that the ultimate goal of a business is "to make money" - not in the sense of increasing the firm's ...

Economic problems

* Depression *

Financial crisis A financial crisis is any of a broad variety of situations in which some financial assets suddenly lose a large part of their nominal value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and man ...

Poverty Poverty is the state of having few material possessions or little income. Poverty can have diverse

Recession In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction when there is a general decline in economic activity. Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending (an adverse demand shock). This may be triggered by various ...

List of recessions The following articles contain lists of recessions: *List of recessions in the United Kingdom *List of recessions in the United States There have been as many as 48 recessions in the United States dating back to the Articles of Confederation, ...

* Stagflation *

Unemployment Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work during the refe ...

Trends and influences

Decentralization Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group. Conce ...

Globalization Globalization, or globalisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide. The term ''globalization'' first appeared in the early 20t ...

Industrialisation Industrialisation ( alternatively spelled industrialization) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial society. This involves an extensive re-organisation of an econo ...

Internationalization In economics, internationalization or internationalisation is the process of increasing involvement of enterprises in international markets, although there is no agreed definition of internationalization. Internationalization is a crucial strateg ...

Economic measures

Consumer price index A consumer price index (CPI) is a price index, the price of a weighted average market basket of consumer goods and services purchased by households. Changes in measured CPI track changes in prices over time. Overview A CPI is a statisti ...

* Economic indicator *

Human Development Index The Human Development Index (HDI) is a statistic composite index of life expectancy, education (mean years of schooling completed and expected years of schooling upon entering the education system), and per capita income indicators, w ...

Measures of national income and output A variety of measures of national income and output are used in economics to estimate total economic activity in a country or region, including gross domestic product (GDP), gross national product (GNP), net national income (NNI), and adjusted nat ...

Gross domestic product Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and sold (not resold) in a specific time period by countries. Due to its complex and subjective nature this measure is of ...

*** Natural gross domestic product **

Gross national product The gross national income (GNI), previously known as gross national product (GNP), is the total domestic and foreign output claimed by residents of a country, consisting of gross domestic product ( GDP), plus factor incomes earned by foreig ...

National income A variety of measures of national income and output are used in economics to estimate total economic activity in a country or region, including gross domestic product (GDP), gross national product (GNP), net national income (NNI), and adjusted nat ...

Net national income In national income accounting, net national income (NNI) is net national product (NNP) minus indirect taxes. Net national income encompasses the income of households, businesses, and the government. Net national income is defined as gross domestic ...

Poverty level The poverty threshold, poverty limit, poverty line or breadline is the minimum level of income deemed adequate in a particular country. The poverty line is usually calculated by estimating the total cost of one year's worth of necessities for ...

Standard of living Standard of living is the level of income, comforts and services available, generally applied to a society or location, rather than to an individual. Standard of living is relevant because it is considered to contribute to an individual's quality ...

UN Human Development Index The Human Development Index (HDI) is a statistic composite index of life expectancy, education (mean years of schooling completed and expected years of schooling upon entering the education system), and per capita income indicators, w ...

Value Value or values may refer to: Ethics and social * Value (ethics) wherein said concept may be construed as treating actions themselves as abstract objects, associating value to them ** Values (Western philosophy) expands the notion of value beyo ...

Cost-of-production theory of value In economics, the cost-of-production theory of value is the theory that the price of an object or condition is determined by the sum of the cost of the resources that went into making it. The cost can comprise any of the factors of production (incl ...

Labor theory of value The labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of " socially necessary labor" required to produce it. The LTV is usually associated with Marxian ...

Surplus value In Marxian economics, surplus value is the difference between the amount raised through a sale of a product and the amount it cost to the owner of that product to manufacture it: i.e. the amount raised through sale of the product minus the cos ...

Time value of money The time value of money is the widely accepted conjecture that there is greater benefit to receiving a sum of money now rather than an identical sum later. It may be seen as an implication of the later-developed concept of time preference. The ...

** Value added ** Value of Earth ** Value of life * Measuring well-being *

Working time Working(laboring) time is the period of time that a person spends at paid labor. Unpaid labor such as personal housework or caring for children or pets is not considered part of the working week. Many countries regulate the work week by law, ...

Economic participants

Employer Employment is a relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services. Usually based on a contract, one party, the employer, which might be a corporation, a not-for-profit organization, a co-operative, or any o ...

Employee Employment is a relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services. Usually based on a contract, one party, the employer, which might be a corporation, a not-for-profit organization, a co-operative, or any ot ...

Entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values t ...

Central bank A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages the currency and monetary policy of a country or monetary union, and oversees their commercial banking system. In contrast to a commercial bank, a centra ...

* Reproductive labor

Economic politics

Antitrust Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as antitrust ...

Cartel A cartel is a group of independent market participants who collude with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market. Cartels are usually associations in the same sphere of business, and thus an alliance of rivals. Mos ...

* Government-granted monopoly *

Reaganomics Reaganomics (; a portmanteau of ''Reagan'' and ''economics'' attributed to Paul Harvey), or Reaganism, refers to the neoliberal economic policies promoted by U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. These policies are commonly associat ...

* Taxation **

Income tax An income tax is a tax imposed on individuals or entities (taxpayers) in respect of the income or profits earned by them (commonly called taxable income). Income tax generally is computed as the product of a tax rate times the taxable income. Ta ...

** Land value tax **

Sales tax A sales tax is a tax paid to a governing body for the sales of certain goods and services. Usually laws allow the seller to collect funds for the tax from the consumer at the point of purchase. When a tax on goods or services is paid to a gove ...

Tariff A tariff is a tax imposed by the government of a country or by a supranational union on imports or exports of goods. Besides being a source of revenue for the government, import duties can also be a form of regulation of foreign trade and p ...

** Tax, tariff and trade **

Value-added tax A value-added tax (VAT), known in some countries as a goods and services tax (GST), is a type of tax that is assessed incrementally. It is levied on the price of a product or service at each stage of production, distribution, or sale to the en ...

Economic policy

Economic policy The economy of governments covers the systems for setting levels of taxation, government budgets, the money supply and interest rates as well as the labour market, national ownership, and many other areas of government interventions into the ec ...

* Agricultural policy *

Fiscal policy In economics and political science, fiscal policy is the use of government revenue collection ( taxes or tax cuts) and expenditure to influence a country's economy. The use of government revenue expenditures to influence macroeconomic variabl ...

Incomes policy Incomes policies in economics are economy-wide wage and price controls, most commonly instituted as a response to inflation, and usually seeking to establish wages and prices below free market level. Incomes policies have often been resorted to ...

Price controls Price controls are restrictions set in place and enforced by governments, on the prices that can be charged for goods and services in a market. The intent behind implementing such controls can stem from the desire to maintain affordability of good ...

***

Price ceiling A price ceiling is a government- or group-imposed price control, or limit, on how high a price is charged for a product, commodity, or service. Governments use price ceilings ostensibly to protect consumers from conditions that could make com ...

****

Rent control Rent regulation is a system of laws, administered by a court or a public authority, which aims to ensure the affordability of housing and tenancies on the rental market for dwellings. Generally, a system of rent regulation involves: *Price cont ...

*** Price floor ****

Minimum wage A minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers can legally pay their employees—the price floor below which employees may not sell their labor. Most countries had introduced minimum wage legislation by the end of the 20th century. B ...

Industrial policy An industrial policy (IP) or industrial strategy of a country is its official strategic effort to encourage the development and growth of all or part of the economy, often focused on all or part of the manufacturing sector. The government takes m ...

Infrastructure-based development Infrastructure-based economic development, also called infrastructure-driven development, combines key policy characteristics inherited from the Rooseveltian progressivist tradition and neo-Keynesian economics in the United States, France's Gau ...

* Investment policy *

Monetary policy Monetary policy is the policy adopted by the monetary authority of a nation to control either the interest rate payable for federal funds, very short-term borrowing (borrowing by banks from each other to meet their short-term needs) or the money s ...

** Disinflation **

Inflation targeting In macroeconomics, inflation targeting is a monetary policy where a central bank follows an explicit target for the inflation rate for the medium-term and announces this inflation target to the public. The assumption is that the best that moneta ...

Monetary hawk and dove A monetary hawk, or hawk for short, is someone who advocates keeping inflation low as the top priority in monetary policy. In contrast, a monetary dove is someone who emphasizes other issues, especially low unemployment, over low inflation. The t ...

Monetary reform Monetary reform is any movement or theory that proposes a system of supplying money and financing the economy that is different from the current system. Monetary reformers may advocate any of the following, among other proposals: * A return t ...

** Quantitative easing ** Reflation * Policy mix – combination of a country's monetary policy and fiscal policy. These two channels influence growth and employment, and are generally determined by the central bank and the government (e.g., the United States Congress) respectively. * Stabilization policy *

Tax policy Tax policy includes the guidelines developed by a government regarding how taxes are imposed, in what amounts, and on whom. It has both microeconomic and macroeconomic aspects. The macroeconomic aspect concerns the overall quantity of taxes t ...

Infrastructure

Infrastructure Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and priv ...

Markets

Market

Types of markets

Black market A black market, underground economy, or shadow economy is a clandestine market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality or is characterized by noncompliance with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the ...

* Commodity markets *

Financial market A financial market is a market in which people trade financial securities and derivatives at low transaction costs. Some of the securities include stocks and bonds, raw materials and precious metals, which are known in the financial ma ...

** Bond market ** Money market ** Spot market **

Secondary market The secondary market, also called the aftermarket and follow on public offering, is the financial market in which previously issued financial instruments such as stock, bonds, options, and futures are bought and sold. The initial sale of the ...

Third market In finance, third market is the trading of exchange-listed securities in the over-the-counter (OTC) market. These trades allow institutional investors to trade blocks of securities directly, rather than through an exchange, providing liquidity ...

** Fourth market **

Stock market A stock market, equity market, or share market is the aggregation of buyers and sellers of stocks (also called shares), which represent ownership claims on businesses; these may include ''securities'' listed on a public stock exchange, ...

Free market In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any ot ...

* Labor market *

Mass market The term "mass market" refers to a market for goods produced on a large scale for a significant number of end consumers. The mass market differs from the niche market in that the former focuses on consumers with a wide variety of backgrounds wi ...

Media market A media market, broadcast market, media region, designated market area (DMA), television market area, or simply market is a region where the population can receive the same (or similar) television and radio station offerings, and may also incl ...

* Regulated market

Aspects of markets

Market failure In neoclassical economics, market failure is a situation in which the allocation of goods and services by a free market is not Pareto efficient, often leading to a net loss of economic value. Market failures can be viewed as scenarios where indiv ...

Market power In economics, market power refers to the ability of a firm to influence the price at which it sells a product or service by manipulating either the supply or demand of the product or service to increase economic profit. In other words, market powe ...

Market share Market share is the percentage of the total revenue or sales in a market that a company's business makes up. For example, if there are 50,000 units sold per year in a given industry, a company whose sales were 5,000 of those units would have a ...

* Market structure * Market system * Market transparency * Market trend * Market dominance

Market forms

Market form *

Perfect competition In economics, specifically general equilibrium theory, a perfect market, also known as an atomistic market, is defined by several idealizing conditions, collectively called perfect competition, or atomistic competition. In theoretical models whe ...

, in which the market consists of a very large number of firms producing a homogeneous product. *

Monopolistic competition Monopolistic competition is a type of imperfect competition such that there are many producers competing against each other, but selling products that are differentiated from one another (e.g. by branding or quality) and hence are not perfec ...

, also called competitive market, where there are a large number of independent firms which have a very small proportion of the market share. *

Monopoly A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situati ...

, where there is only one provider of a product or service. *

Monopsony In economics, a monopsony is a market structure in which a single buyer substantially controls the market as the major purchaser of goods and services offered by many would-be sellers. The microeconomic theory of monopsony assumes a single entity ...

, when there is only one buyer in a market. *

Natural monopoly A natural monopoly is a monopoly in an industry in which high infrastructural costs and other barriers to entry relative to the size of the market give the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, an overwhelming adv ...

, a monopoly in which

economies of scale In microeconomics, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, and are typically measured by the amount of output produced per unit of time. A decrease in cost per unit of output enables ...

cause efficiency to increase continuously with the size of the firm. *

Oligopoly An oligopoly (from Greek ὀλίγος, ''oligos'' "few" and πωλεῖν, ''polein'' "to sell") is a market structure in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of large sellers or producers. Oligopolies often result f ...

, in which a market is dominated by a small number of firms which own more than 40% of the market share. * Oligopsony, a market dominated by many sellers and a few buyers.

Market-oriented activities

Market analysis A market analysis studies the attractiveness and the dynamics of a special market within a special industry. It is part of the industry analysis and thus in turn of the global environmental analysis. Through all of these analyses the strengths, w ...

Marketing Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...

Market segmentation In marketing, market segmentation is the process of dividing a broad consumer or business market, normally consisting of existing and potential customers, into sub-groups of consumers (known as ''segments'') based on some type of shared charact ...

* Market intelligence *

Market research Market research is an organized effort to gather information about target markets and customers: know about them, starting with who they are. It is an important component of business strategy and a major factor in maintaining competitiveness. Ma ...

Money

Money Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money ar ...

Currency A currency, "in circulation", from la, currens, -entis, literally meaning "running" or "traversing" is a standardization of money in any form, in use or circulation as a medium of exchange, for example banknotes and coins. A more general ...

** Community currency **

Dollar Dollar is the name of more than 20 currencies. They include the Australian dollar, Brunei dollar, Canadian dollar, Hong Kong dollar, Jamaican dollar, Liberian dollar, Namibian dollar, New Taiwan dollar, New Zealand dollar, Singapore dollar, ...

** Local currency **

Petrocurrency Petrocurrency (or petrodollar) is a word used with three distinct meanings, often confused: #Dollars paid to oil-producing nations (petrodollar recycling)—a term invented in the 1970s meaning trading surpluses of oil-producing nations. #Currenci ...

Reserve currency A reserve currency (or anchor currency) is a foreign currency that is held in significant quantities by central banks or other monetary authorities as part of their foreign exchange reserves. The reserve currency can be used in international tr ...

Time-based currency In economics, a time-based currency is an alternative currency or exchange system where the unit of account is the person-hour or some other time unit. Some time-based currencies value everyone's contributions equally: one hour equals one service ...

** Yen **

United States dollar The United States dollar ( symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the officia ...

Monetary system A monetary system is a system by which a government provides money in a country's economy. Modern monetary systems usually consist of the national treasury, the mint, the central banks and commercial banks. Commodity money system A commodity m ...

Money supply In macroeconomics, the money supply (or money stock) refers to the total volume of currency held by the public at a particular point in time. There are several ways to define "money", but standard measures usually include currency in circu ...

Resources

Resource management

Resource management In organizational studies, resource management is the efficient and effective development of an organization's resources when they are needed. Such resources may include the financial resources, inventory, human skills, production resources, or ...

Natural resource management Natural resource management (NRM) is the management of natural resources such as land, water, soil, plants and animals, with a particular focus on how management affects the quality of life for both present and future generations (stewardship) ...

Resource allocation In economics, resource allocation is the assignment of available resources to various uses. In the context of an entire economy, resources can be allocated by various means, such as markets, or planning. In project management, resource allocatio ...

Factors of production

Factors of production In economics, factors of production, resources, or inputs are what is used in the production process to produce output—that is, goods and services. The utilized amounts of the various inputs determine the quantity of output according to the rel ...

= Land

Land Land, also known as dry land, ground, or earth, is the solid terrestrial surface of the planet Earth that is not submerged by the ocean or other bodies of water. It makes up 29% of Earth's surface and includes the continents and various isla ...

Natural resource Natural resources are resources that are drawn from nature and used with few modifications. This includes the sources of valued characteristics such as commercial and industrial use, aesthetic value, scientific interest and cultural value. ...

= Labor

= *

Division of labour The division of labour is the separation of the tasks in any economic system or organisation so that participants may specialise (specialisation). Individuals, organizations, and nations are endowed with, or acquire specialised capabilities, an ...

= Capital

Capital Capital may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** List of national capital cities * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences * Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used fo ...

* Capital asset *

Capital intensity Capital intensity is the amount of fixed or real capital present in relation to other factors of production, especially labor. At the level of either a production process or the aggregate economy, it may be estimated by the capital to labor ratio, ...

Financial capital Financial capital (also simply known as capital or equity in finance, accounting and economics) is any economic resource measured in terms of money used by entrepreneurs and businesses to buy what they need to make their products or to provi ...

Human capital Human capital is a concept used by social scientists to designate personal attributes considered useful in the production process. It encompasses employee knowledge, skills, know-how, good health, and education. Human capital has a substantial ...

* Individual capital *

Natural capital Natural capital is the world's stock of natural resources, which includes geology, soils, air, water and all living organisms. Some natural capital assets provide people with free goods and services, often called ecosystem services. All of t ...

Social capital Social capital is "the networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively". It involves the effective functioning of social groups through interpersonal relationships ...

Wealth Wealth is the abundance of valuable financial assets or physical possessions which can be converted into a form that can be used for transactions. This includes the core meaning as held in the originating Old English word , which is from an I ...

Economic theory

Consumer theory The theory of consumer choice is the branch of microeconomics that relates preferences to consumption expenditures and to consumer demand curves. It analyzes how consumers maximize the desirability of their consumption as measured by their pref ...

Efficiency wage hypothesis The term efficiency wages (or rather "efficiency earnings") was introduced by Alfred Marshall to denote the wage per efficiency unit of labor. Marshallian efficiency wages would make employers pay different wages to workers who are of different ef ...

Efficient market hypothesis The efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) is a hypothesis in financial economics that states that asset prices reflect all available information. A direct implication is that it is impossible to "beat the market" consistently on a risk-adjusted bas ...

Marginalism Marginalism is a theory of economics that attempts to explain the discrepancy in the value of goods and services by reference to their secondary, or marginal, utility. It states that the reason why the price of diamonds is higher than that of wa ...

* Prospect theory *

Public choice theory Public choice, or public choice theory, is "the use of economic tools to deal with traditional problems of political science".Gordon Tullock, 9872008, "public choice," ''The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics''. . Its content includes the st ...

Rational choice theory Rational choice theory refers to a set of guidelines that help understand economic and social behaviour. The theory originated in the eighteenth century and can be traced back to political economist and philosopher, Adam Smith. The theory postula ...

Economic ideologies

Consumerism Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. With the Industrial Revolution, but particularly in the 20th century, mass production led to overproduction—the su ...

Monetarism Monetarism is a school of thought in monetary economics that emphasizes the role of governments in controlling the amount of money in circulation. Monetarist theory asserts that variations in the money supply have major influences on nati ...

* Productivism *

Utilitarianism In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals. Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different chara ...

History of economics

History of economic thought

History of economic thought History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

* Ancient economic thought **

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ...

*** ''

Nicomachean Ethics The ''Nicomachean Ethics'' (; ; grc, Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια, ) is Aristotle's best-known work on ethics, the science of the good for human life, which is the goal or end at which all our actions aim. (I§2) The aim of the inquiry is ...

'' * Economics of the

Age of Enlightenment The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...

** British Enlightenment ***

John Locke John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism". Considered one of ...

***

Dudley North Dudley North may refer to: *Dudley North, 3rd Baron North (1581–1666), English nobleman and politician *Dudley North, 4th Baron North (1602–1677), English nobleman and politician, son of the above *Sir Dudley North (economist) (1641&ndas ...

***

David Hume David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" '' Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment ph ...

** French Enlightenment:

Physiocracy Physiocracy (; from the Greek for "government of nature") is an economic theory developed by a group of 18th-century Age of Enlightenment French economists who believed that the wealth of nations derived solely from the value of "land agricult ...

***

François Quesnay François Quesnay (; 4 June 1694 – 16 December 1774) was a French economist and physician of the Physiocratic school. He is known for publishing the " Tableau économique" (Economic Table) in 1758, which provided the foundations of the ideas ...

**** ''Tableau économique'' **** Anne Robert Jacques Turgot **** ''Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth'' *

political economy Political economy is the study of how economic systems (e.g. markets and national economies) and political systems (e.g. law, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied phenomena within the discipline are systems such as labour ...

Adam Smith Adam Smith (baptized 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the thinking of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Seen by some as "The Father of Economics"——� ...

*** ''

The Wealth of Nations ''An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations'', generally referred to by its shortened title ''The Wealth of Nations'', is the '' magnum opus'' of the Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith. First published in ...

'' **

David Ricardo David Ricardo (18 April 1772 – 11 September 1823) was a British political economist. He was one of the most influential of the classical economists along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith and James Mill. Ricardo was also a politician, and a ...

* Socialist economics **

Marxian economics Marxian economics, or the Marxian school of economics, is a heterodox school of political economic thought. Its foundations can be traced back to Karl Marx's critique of political economy. However, unlike critics of political economy, Marxian ...

***

Labour theory of value The labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of " socially necessary labor" required to produce it. The LTV is usually associated with Marxian ...

** Anarchist economics *

Austrian School of Economics The Austrian School is a heterodox school of economic thought that advocates strict adherence to methodological individualism, the concept that social phenomena result exclusively from the motivations and actions of individuals. Austrian school ...

Carl Menger Carl Menger von Wolfensgrün (; ; 28 February 1840 – 26 February 1921) was an Austrian economist and the founder of the Austrian School of economics. Menger contributed to the development of the theories of marginalism and marginal utility ...

Friedrich von Hayek Friedrich August von Hayek ( , ; 8 May 189923 March 1992), often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian–British economist, legal theorist and philosopher who is best known for his defense of classical liberalism. Hayek ...

Ludwig von Mises Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (; 29 September 1881 – 10 October 1973) was an Austrian School economist, historian, logician, and sociologist. Mises wrote and lectured extensively on the societal contributions of classical liberalism. He is ...

Neoclassical economics Neoclassical economics is an approach to economics in which the production, consumption and valuation (pricing) of goods and services are observed as driven by the supply and demand model. According to this line of thought, the value of a good ...

Léon Walras Marie-Esprit-Léon Walras (; 16 December 1834 – 5 January 1910) was a French mathematical economist and Georgist. He formulated the marginal theory of value (independently of William Stanley Jevons and Carl Menger) and pioneered the developme ...

John Bates Clark John Bates Clark (January 26, 1847 – March 21, 1938) was an American neoclassical economist. He was one of the pioneers of the marginalist revolution and opponent to the Institutionalist school of economics, and spent most of his career as ...

Alfred Marshall Alfred Marshall (26 July 1842 – 13 July 1924) was an English economist, and was one of the most influential economists of his time. His book '' Principles of Economics'' (1890) was the dominant economic textbook in England for many years. I ...

Keynesian economics Keynesian economics ( ; sometimes Keynesianism, named after British economist John Maynard Keynes) are the various macroeconomic theories and models of how aggregate demand (total spending in the economy) strongly influences economic output ...

John Maynard Keynes John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in ...

***

Cambridge capital controversy The Cambridge capital controversy, sometimes called "the capital controversy"Brems (1975) pp. 369-384 or "the two Cambridges debate", was a dispute between proponents of two differing theoretical and mathematical positions in economics that starte ...

* Neo-Keynesian economics **

Paul Samuelson Paul Anthony Samuelson (May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009) was an American economist who was the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. When awarding the prize in 1970, the Swedish Royal Academies stated that he " ...

** John Hicks (economist) ***

Neoclassical synthesis The neoclassical synthesis (NCS), neoclassical–Keynesian synthesis, or just neo-Keynesianism was a neoclassical economics academic movement and paradigm in economics that worked towards reconciling the macroeconomic thought of John Maynard Key ...

Post-Keynesian economics Post-Keynesian economics is a school of economic thought with its origins in '' The General Theory'' of John Maynard Keynes, with subsequent development influenced to a large degree by Michał Kalecki, Joan Robinson, Nicholas Kaldor, Sidney ...

Hyman Minsky Hyman Philip Minsky (September 23, 1919 – October 24, 1996) was an American economist, a professor of economics at Washington University in St. Louis, and a distinguished scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His research ...

Joan Robinson Joan Violet Robinson (''née'' Maurice; 31 October 1903 – 5 August 1983) was a British economist well known for her wide-ranging contributions to economic theory. She was a central figure in what became known as post-Keynesian economics. ...

Michał Kalecki Michał Kalecki (; 22 June 1899 – 18 April 1970) was a Polish Marxian economist. Over the course of his life, Kalecki worked at the London School of Economics, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford and Warsaw School of Economics ...

* New Keynesian economics *

Chicago school of economics The Chicago school of economics is a neoclassical school of economic thought associated with the work of the faculty at the University of Chicago, some of whom have constructed and popularized its principles. Milton Friedman and George Stig ...

Milton Friedman Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the ...

***

Economic history

* Economic events **

Economic history of the world It has been estimated that throughout prehistory, the world average GDP per capita was about $158 per annum (adjusted to 2013 dollars), and did not rise much until the Industrial Revolution. The first object or physical thing specifically used in ...

*** Economics in the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

feudalism Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structu ...

and

manorialism Manorialism, also known as the manor system or manorial system, was the method of land ownership (or " tenure") in parts of Europe, notably France and later England, during the Middle Ages. Its defining features included a large, sometimes for ...

*** Economics of the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ide ...

mercantilism Mercantilism is an economic policy that is designed to maximize the exports and minimize the imports for an economy. It promotes imperialism, colonialism, tariffs and subsidies on traded goods to achieve that goal. The policy aims to reduce ...

***

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

*** Economic history of World War I ** Nixon shock * Economic history by region **

Economic history of Africa The earliest humans were hunter gatherers who were living in small, family groupings. Even then there was considerable trade that could cover long distances. Archaeologists have found that evidence of trade in luxury items li ...

***

Economic history of Morocco The economic history of Morocco has largely been charted by the national government through a series of five-year plans. Centralized planning has gradually given way to moderate privatization and neoliberal economic reforms. Saadi dynasty The i ...

*** Economic history of Nigeria ***

Economic history of Somalia Economic history of Somalia is related to the development of Somalia's economy in the last two centuries. The colonial economy The colonial era did not spark foreign economic investment despite the competition of two major European powers in the ...

***

Economic history of South Africa Prior to the arrival of the European settlers in the 17th century the economy of what was to become South Africa was dominated by subsistence agriculture and hunting. In the north, central and east of the country tribes of Bantu peoples occupi ...

***

Economic history of Zimbabwe The Economic History of Zimbabwe began with the transition to majority rule in 1980 and Britain's ceremonial granting of independence. The new government under Prime Minister Robert Mugabe promoted socialism, partially relying on internationa ...

** Economic history of the Arab world ** Economic history of Asia ***

Economic history of Cambodia Cambodia was a farming area in the first and second millennia BC. States in the area engaged in trade in the Indian Ocean and exported rice surpluses. Complex irrigation systems were built in the 9th century. The French colonial period left the l ...

*** Economic history of China **** Economic history of China before 1912 **** Economic history of China (1912–1949) ****

Economic history of China (1949–present) The economic history of China describes the changes and developments in China's economy from the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 to the present day. China has been the fastest growing economy in the world since the 1 ...

**** Economic history of the Republic of China *** Economic history of India ***

Economic history of Indonesia The economic history of Indonesia is shaped by its geographic location, its natural resources, as well as its people that inhabited the archipelago that today formed the modern nation-state of the Republic of Indonesia. The foreign contact and ...

***

Economic history of Iran Prior to 1979, Iran's economic development was rapid. Traditionally an agrarian society, by the 1970s the country had undergone significant industrialization and economic modernization.. Iran National Film Centre (circa 1975). Retrieved January 20 ...

*** Economic history of Japan *** Economic history of Malaysia *** Economic history of Pakistan *** Economic history of Taiwan *** Economic history of Turkey ****

Economic history of the Ottoman Empire The economic history of the Ottoman Empire covers the period 1299–1923. Trade, agriculture, transportation, and religion make up the Ottoman Empire's economy. The Ottomans saw military expansion of currency, more emphasis on manufacturing and ...

***

Economic history of Vietnam Until French colonization in the middle of the 19th century, the economy of Vietnam was mainly agrarian and village-oriented. However, French colonizers deliberately developed the regions differently, designating the South for agricultural product ...

***

Economic history of the Philippines The economic history of the Philippines chronicles the long history of economic policies in the nation over the years. 1973–1986 After experiencing years of positive growth, the Philippine economy between 1973 and 1986 suffered a downturn d ...

** Economic history of Australia ** Economic history of Europe ***

Economic history of France Economic history of France since its late-18th century Revolution was tied to three major events and trends: the Napoleonic Era, the competition with Britain and its other neighbors in regards to 'industrialization', and the 'total wars' of the l ...

*** Economic history of Germany ****

Economic history of the German reunification On July 1, 1990, the economies of the two German states became one. It was the first time in history that a capitalist and a socialist economy had suddenly become one, and there were no precise guidelines on how it could be done. Instead, there w ...

***

Economic history of Greece and the Greek world The economic history of the Greek World spans several millennia and encompasses many modern-day nation states. Since the focal point of the center of the Greek World often changed it is necessary to enlarge upon all these areas as relevant to th ...

***

Economic history of Iceland The economy history of Iceland covers the development of its economy from the Settlement of Iceland in the late 9th century until the present. The field of economic history in Iceland According to a 2011 review study by economic historian Guð ...

***

Economic history of Ireland Ireland's economic history starts at the end of the Last Glacial Period, Ice Age when the first humans arrived there. Agriculture then came around 4500 BC. Iron technology came with the Celts around 350 BC. From the 12th century to the 1970s, ...

*** Economic history of Italy ***

Economic history of Portugal The economic history of Portugal covers the development of the economy throughout the course of Portuguese history. It has its roots prior to nationality, when Roman occupation developed a thriving economy in Hispania, in the provinces of Lusi ...

*** Economic history of Scotland *** Economic history of Spain ***

Economic history of Sweden The economic history of Sweden has since the Iron Age been characterized by extensive foreign trade based on a small number of export and import commodities, often derived from the widely available raw materials iron ore and wood. An industrial e ...

***

Economic history of Venice Venice, which is situated at the north end of the Adriatic Sea, was for hundreds of years the richest and most powerful centre of Europe, the reason being that it gained large-scale profits from the adjacent middle European markets. Venice was the m ...

*** Economic history of the Netherlands (1500–1815) ***

Economic history of the Republic of Ireland The economic history of the Republic of Ireland effectively began in 1922, when the then Irish Free State won independence from the United Kingdom. The state was plagued by poverty and emigration until the 1960s when an upturn led to the revers ...

***

Economic history of the Russian Federation After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and collapse of Soviet Russia's controlled economy, a new Russian Federation was created under Boris Yeltsin in 1991. The Russian Federation had multiple economic reforms, including privatization ...

***

Economic history of the United Kingdom The economic history of the United Kingdom relates the economic development in the British state from the absorption of Wales into the Kingdom of England after 1535 to the modern United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland of the early ...

** Economic history of North America *** Economic history of Canada *** Economic history of Mexico ***

Economic history of the United States The economic history of the United States is about characteristics of and important developments in the U.S. economy from colonial times to the present. The emphasis is on productivity and economic performance and how the economy was affected by ...

** Economic history of Central America ***

Economic history of Nicaragua Nicaragua's economic history has shifted from concentration in gold, beef, and coffee to a mixed economy under the Sandinista National Liberation Front, Sandinista government to an International Monetary Fund policy attempt in 1990. Pre-Columbian ...

** Economic history of South America *** Economic history of Argentina *** Economic history of Brazil *** Economic history of Chile *** Economic history of Colombia ***

Economic history of Ecuador The economic history of Ecuador covers the period of the economy of Ecuador in History of Ecuador, Ecuadoran history beginning with colonization by the Spanish Empire, through Ecuadorian War of Independence, independence and up to modern-day. Col ...

***

Economic history of Peru The industries of the economy of Peru arose in response to the country's rich natural resources. During the regime of the Inca Empire, the economy was centrally planned, and labour was mandatory. Spanish explorers held the Incan system in much ...

* Economic history by subject **

History of banking The history of banking began with the first prototype banks, that is, the merchants of the world, who gave grain loans to farmers and traders who carried goods between cities. This was around 2000 BCE in Assyria, India and Sumeria. Later, in an ...

History of money The history of money concerns the development throughout time of systems that provide the functions of money. Such systems can be understood as means of trading wealth indirectly; not directly as with bartering. Money is a mechanism that facili ...

** History of stock markets

General economic concepts

* Ricardian economics *

* Neo-Keynesian economics *

* New classical economics * New Keynesian economics *

Participatory economics Participatory economics, often abbreviated Parecon, is an economic system based on participatory decision making as the primary economic mechanism for allocation in society. In the system, the say in decision-making is proportional to the impa ...

* Home economics * Goods ** Complement good ** Coordination good **

Free goods A free good is a good that is not scarce, and therefore is available without limit. A free good is available in as great a quantity as desired with zero opportunity cost to society. A good that is made available at zero price is not necessarily a ...

** Inferior goods ** Normal goods ** Public good **

Substitute good In microeconomics, two goods are substitutes if the products could be used for the same purpose by the consumers. That is, a consumer perceives both goods as similar or comparable, so that having more of one good causes the consumer to desire less ...

* isms **

Capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private ...

***

Natural Capitalism ''Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution'' is a 1999 book on environmental economics co-authored by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins. It has been translated into a dozen languages and was the subject of a Harvard ...

** Economic subjectivism **

Socialism Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes th ...

Modern portfolio theory Modern portfolio theory (MPT), or mean-variance analysis, is a mathematical framework for assembling a portfolio of assets such that the expected return is maximized for a given level of risk. It is a formalization and extension of diversificati ...

Game theory Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions among rational agents. Myerson, Roger B. (1991). ''Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict,'' Harvard University Press, p.&nbs1 Chapter-preview links, ppvii–xi It has appli ...

* Human development theory *

Production theory basics Production is the process of combining various inputs, both material (such as metal, wood, glass, or plastics) and immaterial (such as plans, or knowledge) in order to create output. Ideally this output will be a good or service which has value a ...

Time preference theory of interest In economics, time preference (or time discounting, delay discounting, temporal discounting, long-term orientation) is the current relative valuation placed on receiving a Production (economics), good or some cash at an earlier date compared with ...

Agent Agent may refer to: Espionage, investigation, and law *, spies or intelligence officers * Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another ** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuranc ...

Arbitrage In economics and finance, arbitrage (, ) is the practice of taking advantage of a difference in prices in two or more markets; striking a combination of matching deals to capitalise on the difference, the profit being the difference between t ...

Big Mac Index The Big Mac Index is a price index published since 1986 by ''The Economist'' as an informal way of measuring the purchasing power parity (PPP) between two currencies and providing a test of the extent to which market exchange rates result ...

* Big push model *

Cash crop A cash crop or profit crop is an agricultural crop which is grown to sell for profit. It is typically purchased by parties separate from a farm. The term is used to differentiate marketed crops from staple crop (or "subsistence crop") in subsist ...

* Canadian and American economies compared * Catch-up effect * Chicago school *

Collusion Collusion is a deceitful agreement or secret cooperation between two or more parties to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading or defrauding others of their legal right. Collusion is not always considered illegal. It can be used to att ...

Commodity In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them. The price of a co ...

Comparative advantage In an economic model, agents have a comparative advantage over others in producing a particular good if they can produce that good at a lower relative opportunity cost or autarky price, i.e. at a lower relative marginal cost prior to trade. C ...

Competitive advantage In business, a competitive advantage is an attribute that allows an organization to outperform its competitors. A competitive advantage may include access to natural resources, such as high-grade ores or a low-cost power source, highly skilled ...

* complementarity *

Consumer and producer surplus In mainstream economics, economic surplus, also known as total welfare or total social welfare or Marshallian surplus (after Alfred Marshall), is either of two related quantities: * Consumer surplus, or consumers' surplus, is the monetary gain ...

Cost In production, research, retail, and accounting, a cost is the value of money that has been used up to produce something or deliver a service, and hence is not available for use anymore. In business, the cost may be one of acquisition, in whic ...

** Cost-benefit analysis **

Cost-of-living index A cost-of-living index is a theoretical price index that measures relative cost of living over time or regions. It is an index that measures differences in the price of goods and services, and allows for substitutions with other items as pr ...

Debt Debt is an obligation that requires one party, the debtor, to pay money or other agreed-upon value to another party, the creditor. Debt is a deferred payment, or series of payments, which differentiates it from an immediate purchase. The ...

Devaluation In macroeconomics and modern monetary policy, a devaluation is an official lowering of the value of a country's currency within a fixed exchange-rate system, in which a monetary authority formally sets a lower exchange rate of the national curre ...

Disposable income Disposable income is total personal income minus current income taxes. In national accounts definitions, personal income minus personal current taxes equals disposable personal income. Subtracting personal outlays (which includes the major ...

Economic An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with th ...

Economic data Economic data are data describing an actual economy, past or present. These are typically found in time-series form, that is, covering more than one time period (say the monthly unemployment rate for the last five years) or in cross-sectional dat ...

Economic efficiency In microeconomics, economic efficiency, depending on the context, is usually one of the following two related concepts: * Allocative or Pareto efficiency: any changes made to assist one person would harm another. * Productive efficiency: no addi ...

Economic growth Economic growth can be defined as the increase or improvement in the inflation-adjusted market value of the goods and services produced by an economy in a financial year. Statisticians conventionally measure such growth as the percent rate o ...

Economic globalization Economic globalization is one of the three main dimensions of globalization commonly found in academic literature, with the two others being political globalization and cultural globalization, as well as the general term of globalization. Econo ...

** Economic profits ** Economic modeling ** Economic reports **

Economic system An economic system, or economic order, is a system of production, resource allocation and distribution of goods and services within a society or a given geographic area. It includes the combination of the various institutions, agencies, entit ...

Ecosystem services Ecosystem services are the many and varied benefits to humans provided by the natural environment and healthy ecosystems. Such ecosystems include, for example, agroecosystems, forest ecosystem, grassland ecosystems, and aquatic ecosystems. ...

* Elasticity *

Environmental finance Environmental finance is a field within finance that employs market-based environmental policy instruments to improve the ecological impact of investment strategies. The primary objective of environmental finance is to regress the negative impac ...

Euro The euro ( symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens . ...

* Event study *

Experience economy The Experience Economy is the sale of memorable experiences to customers. The term was first used in a 1998 article by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore describing the next economy following the agrarian economy, the industrial economy, an ...

Externality In economics, an externality or external cost is an indirect cost or benefit to an uninvolved third party that arises as an effect of another party's (or parties') activity. Externalities can be considered as unpriced goods involved in either co ...

* Factor price equalization *

Federal Reserve The Federal Reserve System (often shortened to the Federal Reserve, or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a ...

* Financial instruments *

Fiscal neutrality In economics, the excess burden of taxation, also known as the deadweight cost or deadweight loss of taxation, is one of the economic losses that society suffers as the result of taxes or subsidies. Economic theory posits that distortions chang ...

* Full-reserve banking *

General equilibrium In economics, general equilibrium theory attempts to explain the behavior of supply, demand, and prices in a whole economy with several or many interacting markets, by seeking to prove that the interaction of demand and supply will result in an o ...

Gold standard A gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold. The gold standard was the basis for the international monetary system from the 1870s to the early 1920s, and from th ...

* Import substitution *

Income Income is the consumption and saving opportunity gained by an entity within a specified timeframe, which is generally expressed in monetary terms. Income is difficult to define conceptually and the definition may be different across fields. Fo ...

* Income elasticity of demand * Income velocity of money * Induced demand *

Input-output model In computing, input/output (I/O, or informally io or IO) is the communication between an information processing system, such as a computer, and the outside world, possibly a human or another information processing system. Inputs are the signal ...

Interest In finance and economics, interest is payment from a borrower or deposit-taking financial institution to a lender or depositor of an amount above repayment of the principal sum (that is, the amount borrowed), at a particular rate. It is distin ...

* Keynes, John Maynard * Knowledge-based economy *

Living wage A living wage is defined as the minimum income necessary for a worker to meet their basic needs. This is not the same as a subsistence wage, which refers to a biological minimum, or a solidarity wage, which refers to a minimum wage tracking lab ...

Local purchasing Local purchasing is a preference to buy locally produced goods and services rather than those produced farther away. It is very often abbreviated as a positive goal, "buy local" or "buy locally', that parallels the phrase "think globally, act loc ...

Lorenz curve In economics, the Lorenz curve is a graphical representation of the distribution of income or of wealth. It was developed by Max O. Lorenz in 1905 for representing inequality of the wealth distribution. The curve is a graph showing the prop ...

* Marginal Revolution *

Means of production The means of production is a term which describes land, labor and capital that can be used to produce products (such as goods or services); however, the term can also refer to anything that is used to produce products. It can also be used as a ...

Mental accounting Mental accounting (or psychological accounting) attempts to describe the process whereby people code, categorize and evaluate economic outcomes. The concept was first named by Richard Thaler. Mental accounting deals with the budgeting and catego ...

* Menu costs *

Missing market A missing market is a situation in microeconomics where a competitive market allowing the exchange of a commodity would be Pareto-efficient, but no such market exists. Examples A variety of factors can lead to missing markets: A classic example ...

* Model - economics * Model - macroeconomics * Monopoly profit *

Moral hazard In economics, a moral hazard is a situation where an economic actor has an incentive to increase its exposure to risk because it does not bear the full costs of that risk. For example, when a corporation is insured, it may take on higher risk ...

* Moral purchasing *

Multiplier (economics) In macroeconomics, a multiplier is a factor of proportionality that measures how much an endogenous variable changes in response to a change in some exogenous variable. For example, suppose variable ''x'' changes by ''k'' units, which causes a ...

* Neo-classical growth model *

Network effect In economics, a network effect (also called network externality or demand-side economies of scale) is the phenomenon by which the value or utility a user derives from a good or service depends on the number of users of compatible products. Net ...

* Network externality *

Operations research Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve decis ...

Opportunity cost In microeconomic theory, the opportunity cost of a particular activity is the value or benefit given up by engaging in that activity, relative to engaging in an alternative activity. More effective it means if you chose one activity (for example ...

* Output *

Parable of the broken window The parable of the broken window was introduced by French economist Frédéric Bastiat in his 1850 essay " That Which We See and That Which We Do Not See" ("") to illustrate why destruction, and the money spent to recover from destruction, is not ...

Pareto efficiency Pareto efficiency or Pareto optimality is a situation where no action or allocation is available that makes one individual better off without making another worse off. The concept is named after Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), Italian civil engi ...

Price A price is the (usually not negative) quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services. In some situations, the price of production has a different name. If the product is a "good" in the ...

Price discrimination Price discrimination is a microeconomic pricing strategy where identical or largely similar goods or services are sold at different prices by the same provider in different markets. Price discrimination is distinguished from product differe ...

Price elasticity of demand A good's price elasticity of demand (E_d, PED) is a measure of how sensitive the quantity demanded is to its price. When the price rises, quantity demanded falls for almost any good, but it falls more for some than for others. The price elastici ...

* Price points *

Outline of industrial organization The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to industrial organization: Industrial organization – describes the behavior of firms in the marketplace with regard to production, pricing, employment and other decisi ...

* Production function *

Productivity Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...

Profit (economics) In economics, profit is the difference between the revenue that an economic entity has received from its outputs and the total cost of its inputs. It is equal to total revenue minus total cost, including both explicit and implicit costs. It ...

Profit maximization In economics, profit maximization is the short run or long run process by which a firm may determine the price, input and output levels that will lead to the highest possible total profit (or just profit in short). In neoclassical economics, ...

Public bad A public bad, in economics, is the symmetrical opposite of a public good. Air pollution is the most obvious example since it is non-excludable and non-rival, and negatively affects welfare.For current definitions of public bads see: Charles D. K ...

* Public debt *

Purchasing power parity Purchasing power parity (PPP) is the measurement of prices in different countries that uses the prices of specific goods to compare the absolute purchasing power of the countries' currencies. PPP is effectively the ratio of the price of a bask ...

Rahn curve The Rahn curve is a graph used to illustrate an economic theory, proposed in 1996 by American economist Richard W. Rahn, which suggests that there is a level of government spending that maximizes economic growth. The theory is used by classical ...

* Rate of return pricing * Rational expectations * Rational pricing *

Real business cycle Real business-cycle theory (RBC theory) is a class of new classical macroeconomics models in which business-cycle fluctuations are accounted for by real (in contrast to nominal) shocks. Unlike other leading theories of the business cycle, RBC t ...

Real versus nominal in economics In economics, nominal (or, in effect, "named") value (economics), value refers to value measured in terms of absolute money amounts, whereas real value is considered and measured against the actual goods or services for which it can be exchanged ...

Regression analysis In statistical modeling, regression analysis is a set of statistical processes for estimating the relationships between a dependent variable (often called the 'outcome' or 'response' variable, or a 'label' in machine learning parlance) and one ...

Returns to scale In economics, returns to scale describe what happens to long-run returns as the scale of production increases, when all input levels including physical capital usage are variable (able to be set by the firm). The concept of returns to scale arises ...

Risk premium A risk premium is a measure of excess return that is required by an individual to compensate being subjected to an increased level of risk. It is used widely in finance and economics, the general definition being the expected risky return less t ...

* Saving *

Scarcity In economics, scarcity "refers to the basic fact of life that there exists only a finite amount of human and nonhuman resources which the best technical knowledge is capable of using to produce only limited maximum amounts of each economic good. ...

* Seven-generation sustainability *

Slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

Social cost Social cost in neoclassical economics is the sum of the private costs resulting from a transaction and the costs imposed on the consumers as a consequence of being exposed to the transaction for which they are not compensated or charged. In other w ...

Social credit Social credit is a distributive philosophy of political economy developed by C. H. Douglas. Douglas attributed economic downturns to discrepancies between the cost of goods and the compensation of the workers who made them. To combat what he ...

* Social welfare *

Stock exchange A stock exchange, securities exchange, or bourse is an exchange where stockbrokers and traders can buy and sell securities, such as shares of stock, bonds and other financial instruments. Stock exchanges may also provide facilities for t ...

Subsidy A subsidy or government incentive is a form of financial aid or support extended to an economic sector (business, or individual) generally with the aim of promoting economic and social policy. Although commonly extended from the government, the ter ...

Subsistence agriculture Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow food crops to meet the needs of themselves and their families on smallholdings. Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements, with little or no ...

* Sunk cost *

Supply and demand In microeconomics, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a Market (economics), market. It postulates that, Ceteris paribus, holding all else equal, in a perfect competition, competitive market, the unit price for a ...

Supply-side economics Supply-side economics is a Macroeconomics, macroeconomic theory that postulates economic growth can be most effectively fostered by Tax cuts, lowering taxes, Deregulation, decreasing regulation, and allowing free trade. According to supply-sid ...

Sustainable competitive advantage In business, a competitive advantage is an attribute that allows an organization to outperform its competitors. A competitive advantage may include access to natural resources, such as high-grade ores or a low-cost power source, highly skilled ...

Sustainable development Sustainable development is an organizing principle for meeting human development goals while also sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services on which the economy and society depend. The ...

Sweatshop A sweatshop or sweat factory is a crowded workplace with very poor, socially unacceptable or illegal working conditions. Some illegal working conditions include poor ventilation, little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting, o ...

* Technostructure * ''

The Theory of Moral Sentiments ''The Theory of Moral Sentiments'' is a 1759 book by Adam Smith. It provided the ethical, philosophical, economic, and methodological underpinnings to Smith's later works, including '' The Wealth of Nations'' (1776), ''Essays on Philosophica ...

'' by Adam Smith * Transaction cost *

Triple bottom line The triple bottom line (or otherwise noted as TBL or 3BL) is an accounting framework with three parts: social, environmental (or ecological) and economic. Some organizations have adopted the TBL framework to evaluate their performance in a broader ...

* Trust *

Utility As a topic of economics, utility is used to model worth or value. Its usage has evolved significantly over time. The term was introduced initially as a measure of pleasure or happiness as part of the theory of utilitarianism by moral philosophe ...

Utility maximization problem Utility maximization was first developed by utilitarian philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. In microeconomics, the utility maximization problem is the problem consumers face: "How should I spend my money in order to maximize my ...

* Uneconomic growth *

U.S. public debt The national debt of the United States is the total national debt owed by the federal government of the United States to Treasury security holders. The national debt at any point in time is the face value of the then-outstanding Treasury secu ...

* Virtuous circle and vicious circle * Wage rate *

X-efficiency X-inefficiency is the divergence of a firm’s observed behavior in practice, influenced by a lack of competitive pressure, from efficient behavior assumed or implied by economic theory. The concept of X-inefficiency was introduced by Harvey Leiben ...

* Yield * Zero sum game

Economics organizations

American Economic Association The American Economic Association (AEA) is a learned society in the field of economics. It publishes several peer-reviewed journals acknowledged in business and academia. There are some 23,000 members. History and Constitution The AEA was esta ...

* American Institute for Economic Research *

American Law and Economics Association The American Law and Economics Association (ALEA), a United States organization founded in 1991, is focused on the advancement of economic understanding of law, and related areas of public policy and regulation. It promotes research in law and ec ...

Association for Comparative Economic Studies The Association for Comparative Economic Studies (ACES) is the leading scholarly organization for the support of studies on comparative economic systems. Its global membership includes academics, policymakers, and other economists and political scie ...

Association for Evolutionary Economics The Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE) is an international organization of economists working in the institutionalist and evolutionary traditions of Thorstein Veblen, John R. Commons and Wesley Mitchell. It is part of the Allied Social ...

* Association for Social Economics * Canadian Economics Association *

Centre for Economic Policy Research The Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) is an independent, non‐partisan, pan‐European non‐profit organisation. Its mission is to enhance the quality of policy decisions through providing policy‐relevant research, based soundly in e ...

China Center for Economic Research The China Center for Economic Research (CCER) is an economics think tank in Peking University, China. It was opened in August 1994, and is directed by Justin Yifu Lin Justin Yifu Lin (; born on October 15, 1952) is a Chinese economist and p ...

Eastern Economic Association The ''Eastern Economic Journal'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering all aspects of economics. It was established in 1973 and is published by Palgrave Macmillan on behalf of the Eastern Economic Association. The editors-in-chief ...

Econometric Society The Econometric Society is an international society of academic economists interested in applying statistical tools to their field. It is an independent organization with no connections to societies of professional mathematicians or statisticians. ...

European Economic Association The European Economic Association (EEA) is a professional academic body which links European economists. It was founded in the mid-1980s. Its first annual congress was in 1986 in Vienna and its first president was Jacques Drèze. The current pres ...

* International Association for Feminist Economics * International Economic Association * Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association *

National Association for Business Economics The National Association for Business Economics (NABE) is the largest international association of applied economists, strategists, academics, and policy-makers committed to the application of economics. Founded in 1959, it is one of the member o ...

National Bureau of Economic Research The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic c ...

Royal Economic Society The Royal Economic Society (RES) is a professional association that promotes the study of economic science in academia, government service, banking, industry, and public affairs. Originally established in 1890 as the British Economic Association, ...

Southern Economic Association The Southern Economic Association (SEA) is a regional-based scholarly economic An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that e ...

Western Economic Association International Founded in 1922, Western Economic Association International (WEAI) is a non-profit academic society dedicated to the encouragement and dissemination of economic research and analysis. WEAI's principal activities include the publishing of two quarte ...

Economics publications

* List of economics journals *

List of important publications in economics This is a list of important publications in economics, organized by field. Some reasons why a particular publication might be regarded as important: *Topic creator – A publication that created a new topic *Breakthrough – A publicat ...

Persons influential in the field of economics

List of economists This is an incomplete alphabetical list by surname of notable economists, experts in the social science of economics, past and present. For a history of economics, see the article History of economic thought. Only economists with biographical arti ...

Nobel Memorial Prize–winning economic historians

won the

Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel ( sv, Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne), is an economics award administered ...

in 1976 for "his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy". * Robert Fogel and

Douglass North Douglass Cecil North (November 5, 1920 – November 23, 2015) was an American economist known for his work in economic history. He was the co-recipient (with Robert William Fogel) of the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. In the wo ...

won the Nobel Memorial Prize in 1993 for "having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change". *

Merton Miller Merton Howard Miller (May 16, 1923 – June 3, 2000) was an American economist, and the co-author of the Modigliani–Miller theorem (1958), which proposed the irrelevance of debt-equity structure. He shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic ...

, who started his academic career teaching economic history at the LSE, won the Nobel Memorial Prize in 1990 with

Harry Markowitz Harry Max Markowitz (born August 24, 1927) is an American economist who received the 1989 John von Neumann Theory Prize and the 1990 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Markowitz is a professor of finance at the Rady School of Management ...

and William F. Sharpe.

Other notable economic historians

* Moses Abramovitz * T. S. Ashton * Roger E. Backhouse * Correlli Barnett * Jörg Baten * Maxine Berg *

Ben Bernanke Ben Shalom Bernanke ( ; born December 13, 1953) is an American economist who served as the 14th chairman of the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014. After leaving the Fed, he was appointed a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution. Duri ...

Fernand Braudel Fernand Braudel (; 24 August 1902 – 27 November 1985) was a French historian and leader of the Annales School. His scholarship focused on three main projects: ''The Mediterranean'' (1923–49, then 1949–66), ''Civilization and Capitalism'' ...

* Rondo Cameron * Sydney Checkland * Carlo M. Cipolla * Gregory Clark * Thomas C. Cochran * Nicholas Crafts * Louis Cullen * Peter Davies * Brad DeLong *

Barry Eichengreen Barry Julian Eichengreen (born 1952) is an American economist and economic historian who holds the title of George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he ha ...

* Stanley Engerman * Charles Feinstein *

Niall Ferguson Niall Campbell Ferguson FRSE (; born 18 April 1964)Biography
Niall Ferguson

* Ronald Findlay * Roderick Floud *

Claudia Goldin Claudia Goldin (born May 14, 1946) is an American economic historian and labor economist who is currently the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University. She is a co-director of the NBER's Gender in the Economy Study Group and was th ...

* John Habakkuk * Earl J. Hamilton * Eli Heckscher *

Eric Hobsbawm Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm (; 9 June 1917 – 1 October 2012) was a British historian of the rise of industrial capitalism, socialism and nationalism. A life-long Marxist, his socio-political convictions influenced the character of his work. ...

* Leo Huberman * Thomas M. Humphrey * Harold James *

Ibn Khaldun Ibn Khaldun (; ar, أبو زيد عبد الرحمن بن محمد بن خلدون الحضرمي, ; 27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406, 732-808 AH) was an Arab The Historical Muhammad', Irving M. Zeitlin, (Polity Press, 2007), p. 21; "It is, of ...

* Charles P. Kindleberger * John Komlos * Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie * David Laidler * David Landes * Tim Leunig * Friedrich List * Robert Sabatino Lopez * Angus Maddison *

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

* Peter Mathias * Ellen McArthur * Deirdre McCloskey * Joel Mokyr * Cormac Ó Gráda *

Henri Pirenne Henri Pirenne (; 23 December 1862 – 24 October 1935) was a Belgian historian. A medievalist of Walloon descent, he wrote a multivolume history of Belgium in French and became a prominent public intellectual. Pirenne made a lasting contribut ...

* Karl Polanyi * Erik S. Reinert *

Christina Romer Christina Duckworth Romer (née Duckworth; born December 25, 1958) is the Class of 1957 Garff B. Wilson Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and a former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administ ...

* W. W. Rostow *

Murray Rothbard Murray Newton Rothbard (; March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was an American economist of the Austrian School, economic historian, political theorist, and activist. Rothbard was a central figure in the 20th-century American libertarian ...

* Larry Schweikart *

Ram Sharan Sharma Ram Sharan Sharma (26 November 1919 – 20 August 2011) was an Indian historian and Indologist who specialised in the history of Ancient and early Medieval India. He taught at Patna University and Delhi University (1973–85) and was visiting ...

* Anna Jacobson Schwartz *

Robert Skidelsky Robert Jacob Alexander, Baron Skidelsky, (born 25 April 1939) is a British economic historian. He is the author of a three-volume award-winning biography of British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946). Skidelsky read history at Jesus ...

* Graeme Snooks * R. H. Tawney * Peter Temin * Richard Timberlake * Adam Tooze * Eberhard Wächtler * Jeffrey Williamson * Tony Wrigley

External links

History of Economic Thought and Critical Perspectives (NSSR)

The Joy of Economics
chapter 1 o

by Huw Dixon {{Outline footer *Outline