Understanding Economics

A shopkeeper sells his goods on his shop, a clerk works in an office, teacher teaches in the class, a farmer works in a field and so on. After all why do they all work ???? 

The answer would be, we work to earn our livelihood, to satisfy our wants and desire.
Human has unlimited wants. He requires food to eat, clothes to wear and house to live in. Besides these he requires a number of other goods like soap,sugar,t.v,car etc.
When we watch the activities of man we find that most of the time he remain engaged in the work for satisfaction of his wants and in order to satisfy his numerous wants, he requires various types of goods and services.

There are two types of goods 
1) economic goods  
2) non–economic goods

1)  Economic goods : goods which are scarce and command price are called economic goods for ex. Wheat, cloth, tea, milk etc. Hence a man keeps himself engaged in different economic activities in order to get various economic goods with a view to satisfy his wants.
2)  Non - Economic goods : goods which are in such plentiful supply that they do not command any market price are called non-economic goods or free goods ex. rain,sunshine,air etc.

There are two types of activities  
1) economic activities  
2)  Non-economic activities

1) Economic activities: activities which have earning of wealth/income as the prime objective are economic activities. Human activities concerning production, consumption, exchange and distribution of economic goods are economic activities ex.activities of a farmer,teacher, labour , shopkeeper etc.
2) Non- economic activities : activities which do not have earning of wealth/income as their prime objective are non economic activities ex. playing football for health,going to temple,a woman teaching her children at home.These activities do not get anything monetary in return for their services.

Due to these economic activities we face innumerable economic questions in our daily life like
1. How do we as a consumer decide how to spend on the purchase of various goods and services from a limited income?
2. How do producer decide which commodities to produce,how to produce and at what price?
3. What determine the level of wages?
4. How prices of the product determined?

There are some major or big issues or economic questions faced by the nation as a whole 
1. What determines the level of national income?
2. Why India is facing the problem of unemployment, poverty, high price rise?
3. Why china is able to achieve a higher rate of economic growth than India?

These are some of the questions which we study in economics.Seeing the above questions we can get some idea about the subject matter of economics.

What is Economics: Economics as a social science is concerned with various economic questions. It seeks to explain systematically a large variety of questions pertaining to economic behavior of the individuals the society and the economy.
Importance of Economics:  we study economics because it sheds light to various economic issues and it enables us to understand current economic problems and consequences of various economic policies pursued by the government. Economics seeks to develop principles, theories and models that identify the most important determinants or causes of various economic events.
Goals of Economics: the goal is to evolve  policies that might prevent or solve various problems like unemployment, inflation, underemployment and waste of resources in the economy.
Evolution of Economic thoughts: Economic questions are as old as mankind. Economics in the past was known as political economy.

Early days thought: As said by Aristotle, economics is considered as a science of management of household (family) and state.
Later stage: Science of wealth.Wealth was of paramount importance as a means to make a powerful state. Economics emerged as a separate discipline for the first time in the writings of classical economist.

Major definition of economics: economics has been defined differently by different economist, as economics covers a wide range of economic activities faced by human beings and the society.
Their are four major definition of economics:
  • Wealth definition
  • Welfare definition
  • Scarcity definition
  • Growth oriented definition

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