What Is Economics?
Economics is a social science concerned with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. It studies how individuals, businesses, governments, and nations make choices about how to allocate resources. Economics focuses on the actions of human beings, based on assumptions that humans act with rational behavior, seeking the most optimal level of benefit or utility. The building blocks of economics are the studies of labor and trade. Since there are many possible applications of human labor and many different ways to acquire resources, it is the task of economics to determine which methods yield the best results.
Economics can generally be broken down into macroeconomics, which concentrates on the behavior of the economy as a whole, and microeconomics, which focuses on individual people and businesses.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Economics is the study of how people allocate scarce resources for production, distribution, and consumption, both individually and collectively.
Two major types of economics are microeconomics, which focuses on the behavior of individual consumers and producers, and macroeconomics, which examine overall economies on a regional, national, or international scale.
Economics is especially concerned with efficiency in production and exchange and uses models and assumptions to understand how to create incentives and policies that will maximize efficiency.
Economists formulate and publish numerous economic indicators, such as gross domestic product (GDP) and the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
Capitalism, socialism, and communism are types of economic systems.
Understanding Economics
Schools of Economic Theory
There are many competing, conflicting, or sometimes complementary theories and schools of thought within economics.
Economists employ many different methods of research from logical deduction to pure data mining. Economic theory often progresses through deductive processes, including mathematical logic, where the implications of specific human activities are considered in a "means-ends" framework. This type of economics deduces, for example, that it is more efficient for individuals or companies to specialize in specific types of labor and then trade for their other needs or wants, rather than trying to produce everything they need or want on their own. It also demonstrates trade is most efficient when coordinated through a medium of exchange, or money. Economic laws deduced in this way tend to be very general and not give specific results: they can say profits incentivize new competitors to enter a market, but not necessarily how many will do so. Still, they do provide key insights for understanding the behavior of financial markets, governments, economies—and human decisions behind these entities. Â
Economic Indicators
Economic indicators are reports that detail a country's economic performance in a specific area. These reports are usually published periodically by governmental agencies or private organizations, and they often have a considerable effect on stocks, fixed income, and forex markets when they are released. They can also be very useful for investors to judge how economic conditions will move markets and to guide investment decisions.
Consumer Price Index (CPI)
The Consumer Price Index (CPI), also issued by the BLS, measures the level of retail price changes (the costs that consumers pay) and is the benchmark for measuring inflation. Using a basket that is representative of the goods and services in the economy, the CPI compares the price changes month after month and year after year.7 Â This report is one of the more important economic indicators available, and its release can increase volatility in equity, fixed income, and forex markets. Greater-than-expected price increases are considered a sign of inflation, which will likely cause the underlying currency to depreciate.
Feudalism
Later, as civilizations developed, economies based on production by social class emerged, such as feudalism and slavery. Slavery involved production by enslaved individuals who lacked personal freedom or rights and were treated as the property of their owner. Feudalism was a system where a class of nobility, known as lords, owned all of the lands and leased out small parcels to peasants to farm, with peasants handing over much of their production to the lord. In return, the lord offered the peasants relative safety and security, including a place to live and food to eat.
Socialism
Socialism is a form of cooperative production economy. Economic socialism is a system of production where there is limited or hybrid private ownership of the means of production (or other types of productive property) and a system of prices, profits, and losses is not the sole determinant used to establish who engages in production, what to produce and how to produce it. Segments of society band together to share these functions
