Economics

The term economics refers both to an intellectual discipline and to a profession. The intellectual discipline of economics is an attempt to gain an understanding of the processes that govern the production, distribution and consumption of wealth, and to use that understanding to assist in the prediction of the consequences of economic activities. It uses the methodology of science and can be considered to be a science insofar as it produces testable propositions , although it is widely believed that the usual treatment of some branches of the subject should be regarded as normative.

Unlike most other sciences, economics is often the subject of strongly-held opinions by laymen, and one of the functions of economists is to counter damaging, popular fallacies .

The economics articles

Subject groups

There are articles in seven main subject groups:

• Economic methodology; including the philosophy of economics, the history of economic thought, neuroeconomics, experimental economics, economic model and econometrics;

• Economic theory; including financial economics, international economics, microeconomics, macroeconomics, welfare economics;

• Economic theories; including Capital Asset Pricing Model, Diamond-Dybvig model, Keynesianism, IS-LM model, monetarism,

• Economic concepts; including agency problem, arbitrage, asset price bubble, balance of payments, balance of trade, capital (economics), capital (economics), competition, deflation, discount rate, discounted cash flow, economic efficiency, elasticity (economics), employment, exchange rate, factors of production, Gross Domestic Product, Human Development Index, inflation, interest, labour, land, market, money supply, moral hazard, multiplier effect, national debt, net present value, opportunity cost, production function, price index, public goods, recession (economics), social capital, supply and demand, terms of trade, unemployment, utility

• Economics-related policies, techniques and institutions; including antitrust, applied statistics, bank failures and rescues, banking, Bank for International Settlements, bond (finance), central bank, competition policy, cost-benefit analysis, credit rating agency, EU competition policy, Euro, Federal Reserve System, Financial regulation, Financial Stability Forum, financial system, fiscal policy, gold standard, International Monetary Fund, monetary policy, National Recovery Administration, option, public expenditure, taxation, World Bank,

• Economic events; including bank failures and rescues, crash of 1929, crash of 2008, G20 summit, Great Depression, Great Depression in the United States, Great Recession, New Deal, Paulson Plan, recession of 2009, sovereign default, subprime mortgage crisis,

• Economists, including William Beveridge, Irving Fisher, Milton Friedman, Alvin Hansen, Friedrich Hayek, John Maynard Keynes, (Thomas) Robert Malthus, Alfred Marshall, Harry Markowitz, Elinor Ostrom, Vilfredo Pareto, David Ricardo, Paul Samuelson, Adam Smith, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Thorstein Veblen,

Article format

Articles are in up to five parts.

• The main article, which is intended to be accessible to readers with no training in economics and no familiarity with mathematics, and consequently contains no equations or charts, and in which technical terms are shown in italics, indicating that definitions are available on the related articles subpage.
• The related articles subpage, which contains a link to the index of topics; lists of parent articles, subtopics and related topics; and a glossary of the terms shown in italics on the main page.
• A tutorials subpage (for some articles) containing mathematical equations and charts and material suitable for reference by economists and students of economics.
• A timelines subpage (for some articles) listing events in chronological order, the main purpose of which is to provide links to contemporary news reports.
• An addendum subpage (for some articles) containing material that is more detailed than is considered appropriate to the main article.

Index

The economics index provides a link to every individual concept or topic that is referred to in the economics articles.

Timelines

A list of the timelines appearing as subpages to economics articles is on the timelines subpage of this article.

Glossaries

The economics glossary contains definitions of terms that are in general use by economists, and more specialised terms are included in the finance glossary and the banking glossary.