Department of Economics | St.Teresa’s College (Autonomous)

Department of Economics | St.Teresa’s College (Autonomous)

Economics

The social sciences of economics deal with the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. Economics deals with the actions and interactions of economic agents and the functioning of national economies. Microeconomics studies what are considered the basic elements of the economy, such as individual actors and markets, their interactions, and the results of those interactions. Individual agents  include households, businesses, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics studies the economy as a system in which production, consumption, savings, and investment interact and the factors that influence them (employment of labor, capital, and land, currency inflation, economic growth, and the influence of these factors). study public policy that influences). 

Nobody has ever been able to neatly define the scope of economics. Many people agree with Alfred Marshall, a leading 19th-century English economist, that economics is "a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life; it examines that part of individual and social action which is most closely connected with the attainment, and use of the material requisites of happiness"—despite the fact that sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists frequently study the same phenomena. English economist Lionel Robbins defined economics in the twentieth century as "the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between (given) ends and scarce means which have alternative uses." In other words, according to Robbins, economics is the science of economising.

There is also the important field of development economics, which investigates the attitudes and institutions that support economic development in poor countries as well as those capable of self-sustaining economic growth (for example, development economics was at the heart of the Marshall Plan). In this field, economists are concerned with the extent to which public policy can influence economic development factors.

The specialised fields of public finance, money and banking, international trade, labour economics, agricultural economics, industrial organisation, and others cut across these major divisions in economics. Economists are frequently consulted to assess the effects of government policies such as taxation, minimum-wage laws, rent controls, tariffs, interest rate changes, government budget changes, and so on.