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A Summary of Economics and its definitions throughout history

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

• Microeconomics analyzes individual agents and markets, while macroeconomics analyzes economies as a system.

• Other distinctions in economics include positive vs. normative economics, rational vs. behavioral economics, and mainstream vs. heterodox economics.

• Economic analysis can be applied in various fields, including business, finance, healthcare, and government.

• The term "economics" comes from the Greek word for "the way to run a household."

• There have been various definitions of economics throughout history, including Adam Smith's definition of it as "an inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations."

• Classical political economy began with Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and focused on land, labor, and capital as factors of production.

• Karl Marx developed Marxist economics, which focused on the exploitation of labor by capital.

• Neoclassical economics emerged in the late 19th century and focused on marginal utility and marginal cost as determinants of value.

• Lionel Robbins provided a widely cited definition of economics as the science that studies the allocation of scarce resources to alternative ends.

• There are ongoing debates about how to define economics and what its scope should be.

• Economics has been applied to many fields, including war, crime, education, and the environment.Overview of Economics and its Schools of Thought

• Economics is the study of human behavior as it relates to the allocation of scarce resources to competing ends.

• Neoclassical economics formed between 1870 and 1910, systematizing supply and demand as joint determinants of price and quantity in market equilibrium.

• Keynesian economics, popularized by John Maynard Keynes in 1936, focuses on determinants of national income in the short run and explains why high labor-market unemployment might not be self-correcting.

• The Chicago School of economics is known for its free-market advocacy and monetarist ideas.

• The Austrian School emphasizes human action, property rights, and the freedom to contract and transact to have a thriving and successful economy.

• Other schools of economics include the Freiburg School, the School of Lausanne, post-Keynesian economics, and the Stockholm School.

• Theoretical research in economics involves the creation of quantitative models and the testing of hypotheses.

• Empirical research is frequently conducted using econometrics and statistical methods to estimate the size, economic significance, and statistical significance of hypothesized relations.

• Microeconomics examines how entities interact within a market to create a market system.

• Macroeconomics studies the economy as a whole, including issues such as inflation, unemployment, and economic growth.

• International economics focuses on the economic relations between countries.

• Development economics focuses on the economic conditions of developing countries.

• Behavioral economics combines economics and psychology to study how people make decisions in various economic situations.Introduction to Microeconomics

• Microeconomics studies individual markets and assumes that activity in the market being analysed does not affect other markets.

• Imperfect competition means market power is unequally distributed and firms have the potential to be "price makers".

• Production is the conversion of inputs into outputs, and includes production for consumption, investment goods, public goods and private goods.

• Opportunity cost is the economic cost of production and expresses the basic relationship between scarcity and choice.

• Inputs used in the production process include labour services, capital, and land, among others.

• Economic efficiency measures how well a system generates desired output with a given set of inputs and available technology.

• Specialization is considered key to economic efficiency and creates opportunities for gains from trade whereby resource owners benefit from trade in the sale of one type of output for other, more highly valued goods.

• The theory of supply and demand is an organizing principle for explaining how prices coordinate the amounts produced and consumed.

• Firms combine labour and capital and can achieve far greater economies of scale than individual market trading.

• Industrial organization studies the strategic behaviour of firms that have significant control of price and considers the structure of such markets and their interactions.

• Uncertainty and game theory are branches of economics that consider unknown prospects of gain or loss, whether quantifiable as risk or not, and strategic interactions between agents, respectively.

• Financial economics describes the allocation of financial resources, the pricing of financial instruments, and the financial structure of companies, among others.Overview of Economics

• Market failure is a term used to describe several problems that can undermine standard economic assumptions, including information asymmetries, incomplete markets, natural monopoly, public goods, and externalities.

• Welfare economics evaluates well-being from the allocation of productive factors within an economy, analyzing social welfare in terms of economic activities of individuals.

• Macroeconomics examines the economy as a whole to explain broad aggregates and their interactions, including national income and output, unemployment, and price inflation.

• Growth economics studies the factors that explain economic growth and differences in output per capita between countries.

• The economics of a depression spurred the creation of macroeconomics as a separate discipline, with John Maynard Keynes outlining the key theories of Keynesian economics.

• Monetary policy involves the management of the money supply and its relationship to the nominal value of total output and the general price level.

• Fiscal policy involves adjusting spending and taxation policies to alter aggregate demand to influence macroeconomic conditions.

• Economic inequality includes income and wealth inequality, and research has linked it to political and social instability, as well as hindering economic growth and macroeconomic stability.

• Public economics deals with the economic activities of the public sector, including tax incidence, cost-benefit analysis of government programs, and fiscal politics.

• International trade studies the determinants of goods-and-services flows across international boundaries, while international finance examines the flow of capital across international borders and its effects on exchange rates.

• Labor economics seeks to understand the functioning and dynamics of the markets for wage labor, including the interaction of workers and employers.

• Economics has relevance in subjects such as insurance, contract law, mechanism design, monetary economics, and healthcare, with applied subjects including market and legal remedies to spread or reduce risk, such as warranties, inspection, and regulation for quality and information disclosure.