economics
Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Medical, Financial, Acronyms, Idioms, Wikipedia.
economics
Ancient and Medieval Periods
Mercantilism, the Physiocrats, and Adam Smith
In the transition to modern times (16th–18th cent.), European overseas expansion led to the growth of commerce and the economic policies of mercantilism, a system that inspired a substantial body of literature on the subject of economic nationalism. In the late 17th and the 18th cents., protest against the governmental regulation characteristic of mercantilism was voiced, especially by the physiocrats. That group advocated laissez-faire, arguing that business should follow freely the “natural laws” of economics without government interference. They regarded agriculture as the sole productive economic activity and encouraged the improvement of cultivation. Because they considered land to be the sole source of wealth, they urged the adoption of a tax on land as the only economically justifiable tax.
In the 18th cent. important work in economics was done by the Scottish philosopher David Hume. His analysis of the natural advantages that some nations enjoy in the cultivation of certain products and his observations on the flow of commerce became the basis for the theory of international trade. The most important work of the 18th cent., however, was Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), which is considered by many to be the first complete treatise on economics. Smith identified self-interest as the basic economic force and, through his analysis of the division of labor and his comprehensive study of the development of economic institutions in the West, established economics as a major area of study. John Millar, a follower of Smith, incorporated and developed these ideas into a highly sophisticated economic interpretation of history. Smith's theories, especially his advocacy of free trade, played an important part in the Industrial Revolution then taking place in Britain.
Malthus, Ricardo, and Mill
The Socialists and Marx
The early exponents of socialism, especially in France, attacked the idea of the necessity of private property and competition and were interested in revamping the economic and social order. Among those were C. H. Saint-Simon, Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, and Louis Blanc. In Germany the historical school arose under Wilhelm Roscher, Bruno Hildebrand, and Karl Knies, who doubted the existence of universal economic laws and emphasized the particular development of economic institutions in individual nations.
The greatest challenge to classical economics came from the followers of Karl Marx. Marx's critique of capitalism was moral and social, as well as economic; but in the exposition of the workings of the capitalist system he and his followers developed important insights into the structural weaknesses of the market economy, especially the recurrence of economic crises (see depression).
Further Evolution of Classical Economics
Keynes
Since World War II
After World War II, emphasis was placed on the analysis of economic growth and development. Western economists notable for their contributions to the economics of growth and development include Gunnar Myrdal of Sweden, Sir Arthur Lewis of Great Britain, and Joseph Schumpeter of the United States.
In recent years, economic theory has been broadly separated into two major fields: macroeconomics, which studies entire economic systems; and microeconomics, which observes the workings of the market on an individual or group within an economic system. The use of complex mathematical techniques and statistical data in economic forecasting has resulted in a new branch of economics known as econometrics. British economist Arthur Pigou was influential in the development of welfare economics, an important branch of the discipline that suggested that an economic system was better if even one person's satisfaction was increased while no one else's was decreased.
In the 1980s supply-side economics (which sees economic growth as essential for improving the material health of society) was used as a policy tool by the Reagan administration. Another modern economic school that was influential in the Reagan years is monetarism; monetarists, such as Milton Friedman, believe that the money supply exerts a dominant influence on the economy. In the 1990s, Nobel laureate Gary Becker extended the scope of macroeconomic analysis by applying economic reasoning to human behavior, including the use of sociology, anthropology, and other disciplines. Game theory has also been appied to economics (see games, theory of).
Bibliography
See D. Colander and A. W. Coats, ed., The Spread of Economic Ideas (1989); R. L. Heilbroner and L. C. Thurow, Economics Explained (rev. ed. 1998); R. L. Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers (7th rev. ed. 1999); P. Samuelson and W. Nordhaus, Economics (18th ed. 2004); S. Nasar, Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius (2011).
economics
the specialist social science concerned with the study of economic behaviour. The term derives from the Greek for ‘household management’, and it has nowadays mainly replaced the earlier term for economic science, POLITICAL ECONOMY. The term can also be used to refer to the study of any behaviour in which there is a scarcity of means to achieve given ends (L. Robbins, The Nature and Significance of Economic Science, 1932).A general distinction is drawn between microeconomics, which is concerned with the behaviour of individual units within an economy, such as individual consumers or firms, and macroeconomics, which is concerned with the study of aggregate economic activity, e.g. overall determinants of national income, levels of employment, etc.
Adam SMITH is usually regarded as the founding father of modern economics. The characteristic approach within the subject has been the method of simplification of IDEALIZATION (see also ECONOMIC MAN). This approach was developed by CLASSICAL ECONOMISTS, such as David Ricardo (1772-1823) and John Stuart MILL, and continued in NEOCLASSICAL ECONOMICS and in the work of modern economists.
Like sociology, although not to the same extent, economics has remained divided by competing perspectives. Important divisions within the modern subject exist between KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS and MONETARISM. Other distinctive approaches include MARXIAN ECONOMICS and INSTITUTIONAL ECONOMICS. See also RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY, EXCHANGE THEORY, THEORY OF GAMES, ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY.
Economics
a branch of science that studies production relations or the specific aspects of production relations in a given sphere of social production and exchange.
As a field of human knowledge, economics entails (1) the study of the objective laws governing the economic structure of society within the framework of the socioeconomic formations that regularly follow and replace one another, (2) the theoretical analysis of the processes and phenomena in the various spheres and branches of the national economy, and (3) the elaboration of practical recommendations with respect to the production and distribution of the necessities of life. Economics is one of the social sciences. The economic sciences are the product of long-term historical development. The establishment of a system of economic knowledge was directly tied to the advent of political economy as a science.
Works by classical bourgeois political economists laid the scientific foundation for the development of the economic sciences; such works investigated many important socioeconomic processes in the capitalist economies. The consolidation of the capitalist mode of production, the increasingly antagonistic opposition between hired labor and capital, and the transformation of the bourgeoisie from a progressive into a reactionary class contributed to the emergence of vulgar bourgeois political economy, which supplanted the analysis of the internal laws of the capitalist economic system with the description and systematization of externally perceived economic processes and phenomena.
The possibility of creating a genuinely scientific system of economic knowledge arose with the advent of Marxist economic doctrine, which incorporated the highest achievements of previous economic thought and creatively reworked them in accordance with materialist historical principles. F. Engels and V. I. Lenin made enormous contributions to K. Marx’ economic theory. Marxist-Leninist economic theory was subsequently developed and concretized in the theoretical activity of the CPSU and of the fraternal Marxist-Leninist parties as well as in scholarly works by Soviet and foreign Marxist economists.
The Marxist system of classification differentiates between basic and applied economic sciences. The task of the basic sciences is to study objective economic laws and theoretically justify their effective application. The basic sciences include political economy, history of the national economy, history of economic thought, national economic planning, theory of economic management, statistics, accounting, and the analysis of economic activity. The applied sciences utilize the results of basic studies to solve specific practical problems. The various types of applied economic sciences are differentiated by function (finances and credit, money circulation, pricing, demography, labor economics, and material and technical supply), region or geographic area (economics of individual countries), and branch (for example, industrial, agricultural, construction, transport, or communications economics).
Political economy plays the principal role in the system of economic sciences, serving as the theoretical and methodological foundation of the entire complex formed by these sciences. Increased emphasis on the role of mathematics in economic research distinguishes the present stage of development of the economic sciences. In particular, the modeling of economic processes is being intensively developed. The socialist countries make practical use of the theses, conclusions, and recommendations of the economic sciences in the drafting and implementation of economic policy.
REFERENCES
Marx, K. K kritike politicheskoi ekonomii: Predislovie. K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 13.Lenin, V. I. “Tri istochnika i tri sostavnykh chasti marksizma.” Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 23.
Lenin, V. I. “Karl Marks.” lbid., vol. 26.
Lenin, V. I. “Ekonomika i politika v epokhu diktatury proletariata.” Ibid., vol. 39.
Materialy XXV s”ezda KPSS. Moscow, 1977.
Sistema ekonomicheskikh nauk. Editor in chief, K. V. Ostrovitianov. Moscow, 1968.
Eremin, A. M. O sisteme ekonomicheskikh nauk. Moscow, 1968.
Abalkin, L. I. Politicheskaia ekonomiia i ekonomicheskaia politika. Moscow, 1970.
Khachaturov, T. S. Sovetskaia ekonomika na sovremennom etape. Moscow, 1975.
L. I. ABALKIN and A. A. KHANDRUEV
economics
[‚ek·ə′näm·iks or ‚ē·kə′näm·iks]economics
http://economics.about.com
www.res.org.uk
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~gdegeest