Economics

What is Economics?

Economics is one of the social sciences. It is the study of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics explores how people and institutions behave and function when producing, exchanging and using goods and services. Today many of the problems which dominate our newspaper headlines are economic problems.
An important part of the work of an economist is collecting and analysing observations about economic phenomena - prices, employment, costs, Gross Domestic Product - what we call data. Economics studies theory, data and statistical techniques to arrive at a new understanding of economic problems or to make policy recommendations which hopefully will improve the welfare and living standards of our society.

Economics is a field that can be broken down into a variety of different schools, divisions, and methods of analysis, although the primary two methods are macroeconomics— the study of economy as a whole — and microeconomics— the study and modeling of individual agents in an economy.