12 Facts About Economics

1.

Economics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.

FactSnippet No. 453,823
2.

Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work.

FactSnippet No. 453,824
3.

Alfred Marshall provided a still widely cited definition in his textbook Principles of Economics that extended analysis beyond wealth and from the societal to the microeconomic level:.

FactSnippet No. 453,825
4.

Economics is a study of man in the ordinary business of life.

FactSnippet No. 453,826
5.

Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.

FactSnippet No. 453,827
6.

Economics posited that the growth of population and capital, pressing against a fixed supply of land, pushes up rents and holds down wages and profits.

FactSnippet No. 453,828
7.

Economics therefore advocated active policy responses by the public sector, including monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government to stabilize output over the business cycle.

FactSnippet No. 453,829
8.

Economics has historically been subject to criticism that it relies on unrealistic, unverifiable, or highly simplified assumptions, in some cases because these assumptions simplify the proofs of desired conclusions.

FactSnippet No. 453,830
9.

Economics argued that formal models were largely not important in the empirical work, either, and that the fundamental factor behind the theory of the firm, behaviour, was neglected.

FactSnippet No. 453,831
10.

Economics has been derogatorily dubbed "the dismal science", first coined by the Victorian historian Thomas Carlyle in the 19th century.

FactSnippet No. 453,832
11.

Economics'storians have employed political economy to explore the ways in the past that persons and groups with common economic interests have used politics to effect changes beneficial to their interests.

FactSnippet No. 453,833
12.

Economics did foundational work which later developed into evolutionary economics.

FactSnippet No. 453,834