Talk:Economics

Template:FormerFA Template:Mainpage date

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Economics article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Template:Bizetasks

economics and scarcity

Every few months I look at the opening to this article and see an opening like the current one: 'Economics (from the Greek οίκος [oikos], 'house', and νομος [nomos], 'rule', hence "household management") is a social science dealing with the allocation of scarce resources to meet alternative ends; the science of scarcity.' This does not describe what economics is though, it describes what one school of economics, neoclassical economics deals with. To quote from that web page - "...neoclassical economists have built a structure to understand the allocation of scarce resources among alternative ends..." OK, but neoclassical economics does not describe all schools of economics, just one school of economics. This is like saying religion is about the worship of Jesus. Religion is about the worship of Jesus, but it is about other things as well, for some people it is the worship of Vishnu. I keep removing this definition, but people keep putting it in, I think most English-speaking people don't even realize there are economic schools other than the neoclassical one. Ruy Lopez 18:42, 4 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I made a few more edits to the opening. Someone inserted a lot of stuff mentioning economics in a narrow neoclassical context. It can not be so narrow, it must be broader in the opening. As I said before, religion is about worshipping Jesus, but it isn't only about worshipping Jesus, and economics isn't all about the neoclassical school. In my mind, the best thing to do is have this broad in the beginning, and then get into the details further down in the article. I think the religion article is a good model. In the opening here we had "the allocation of scarce resources to meet alternative ends; the science of scarcity...competing alternative allocations of goods...choices...when a particular resource or good becomes scarce...choice subject to constraints". I mean, how many times can you repeat the same thing? Allocation of scarce resources, scarcity, alternative allocations of goods, good becomes scarce, choice subject to constraints - someone just rephrased the same idea three or four times and repeated it in the opening. Beyond this redundancy, it is not about economics but the description of one school of economics. Ruy Lopez 19:02, 4 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree completely; I'd made some similar edits a while back, but at the time I seemed to be spitting into a very powerful wind. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:29, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

Question: were does the term "scarce" come from in the definition "household management", to use the equation "science of scarcity"? nobs 19:19, 10 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

While I disagree with the claim that economics deals specifically with scarce resources, nobs, there seems to be a fallacy in your question. Etymology is not definition. After all, economics is not about households any more, even if we take household in the broader Greek sense of a reasonably self-sufficient unit. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:23, September 11, 2005 (UTC)

More importantly, the opening definition of economics here contradicts with the definition in the Wiktionary, which is "1. Social science that studies society's allocation of scarce resources to meet unlimited wants and needs. 2. More generally, the social-scientific study of resource or wealth management, production of new material goods and services, distribution of benefits among individuals and groups, investment and consumption." This seems like a much better definition to me and perhaps the article should open with a variant of this? Rob 14:27, 28 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This is not economics, it is neoclassical economics. It would be like saying religion means the worship of Jesus. Yes, if you live in the US, it seems like this is what religion is, but it is not to people in rural India or Thailand, or even Israel. Billions of people are Christian, and Jesus exists in the pantheon of the world's billion plus Muslims, but it does not make all religion the worship of Jesus. Wiktionary's definition is wrong - Merriam-Webster[1] has a better definition Ruy Lopez 17:05, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There seems to be a continual drive to define all economics as neoclassical economics in the introduction. This despite there being a neoclassical section in the article, a "mainstream economics" section which is neoclassical, and most of the article focusing on aspects of neoclassical points of focus or stating neoclassical theories as fact, such as that price is determined by supply and demand. Ruy Lopez 17:05, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the definition of economics shouldn't be just "study of scarcity" since that is only one of many possible definitions. At the same time there's stuff that's just plain wrong whenever 'neo-classical economics' come up. For example in the Scarcity Definition it states "It ignores how values are fixed, prices are determined and national income is generated" which is just false. Neo-classical economics, or economics based on the idea of scarcity more generally does not ignore any of these. Unlimited wants and limited means determine prices, labor/leisure choice, production etc. I mean, if you take out prices and output, what exactly is there left in neo-classical economics? Apparantly it doesn't study anything but scarcity for it's own sake. At this point I'm not going to make any edits, but I really do think that portions of this article should be revised.radek

Suggestion: Perhaps we could define economics as a social science that occupies itself with the study of how resources (which happen to be scarce) are allocated amongst competing interests given that the resources have alternate ends. It also examines the effects of a change in the allocation of resources and the agents that are responsible for the change (e.g. consumers, theories, government policies). Therefore it examines the cause and effect relationships of how, why and to what end resources are allocated.

The above is intended to be a rough version of a definition and I hope contributers to this site can smooth it out. I have tried to use terms that do not solely relate to one school of economics or to all except one. Unfortunatley if I have repeated what is generally associated witth neoclassical economics then it is only because all schools of economic thought are instrinsically tied to one another. Most if not all schools of economics begin from or owe thier origin to the study of the cause and effect relationships associated with resource allocation. M&Ms —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.203.147.210 (talk • contribs) 21 Dec 2005.

I suggest this discussion is getting itself tied up in philosophy as well as trying to define what the word economics currently means. Generally any word has an accepted meaning, and if I look up most student text books on economics it will say something along the lines of "economics is the human science which studies the relationship between scarce resources and the various uses which compete for these resources", which is not too bad a starting point from a lay persons point of view. We should note that resource in economic society are only scarce as opposed to rare because of the insatiable wants as opposed to needs of human beings. As soon as one want is filled, due to our competitive nature, we want more, now you could branch off into biology, psychology and evolution, and the whole structure quickly becomes unworkable. One of the great things about this site is all the links which allows one to jump and branch off into all these related subjects (and get hopelessly lost, but hey its fun). All things are connected, language is imperfect, stop trying to make this perfect (impossible), rather work to make it useful. The people above clearly do not need this article, they are experts and perhaps enjoy arguing a POV rather than help educate others. I'm a beginner and reckon it's not too bad. I agree it is important to get to alternative views and models but lets start with the basics so someone like me has some chance of making sense of it, and develop it from there, leading into more complex and inclusive models. I think the way we learn physics is a useful analogy, we tend to learn classical physics first, which as a model is a good mathematical approxation to the way the universe works at certian scales under most conditions, and is understandale from the way we observe the world as we grow up. If we were to start learning quantum physics, of which classical physics is but a subset, we would never get anywhere, I mean most physicist would probably admit that at a 'commonsense' level they do not understand quantum physics. Maybe the dilemma could be resolved with a simple note, saying this is the commonly accepted neoclassical definition and other definitions which are more complex and inclusive of human activitiy are developed later under their own appropriate heading. While I think the religion/Jesus analogy is seductive I'm not convinced that its very useful. BobW67.103.183.204 23:05, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that is often what you will find opening a current textbook in most countries, but I think that says more about the current hegemony of neo-classical economics than about the nature of economics as such. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:05, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

content dispute on coercive monopoly

There appears to be a content dispute on the coercive monopoly article. If this subject is of interest to you, please reply to the straw poll at Talk:Coercive_monopoly. -- BBlackmoor ^(talk) 16:32, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Neo-classical economics

The idea that individuals act to maximise utility is not and never has been solely associated with the neoclassical school of thought. Much of the mainstream of economics is, and has always been concerned with this concept and exploring its limitations. This can be demonstrated by reference to just about any undergraduate textbook. What's normally referred to as 'Neoclassicisim' refers to either (some) macroeconomic applications of this procedure, or to the more extreme micreconomic applications. I've edited a section of the article accordingly. The Land 16:43, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to agree, although it's almost impossible to agree on definition of "neoclassical economics" that will satisfy everyone (as an aside, many folks confuse "neoclassical" with "new-classical" - I know, I know, economists are not very creative when it comes to naming their schools). To me "neoclassical" tends to mean "the economic succesors of Alfred Marshall", or in other words supply AND demand (contra classicals who focused on supply and say, Austrians who focused on demand). Or to put it yet another way - from point of view of value theory - that value is determined by both a subjective component (individual preferences) and an objective one (underlying production technology and amounts of available factors of production). So personally I'd put in New-Keynsians (why aren't they even listed under Schools of thought? They have as much claim to be 'succesors to Keynes" as do Post-Keynsians (again, not very creative naming conventions) in the Neoclassical camp. Hence, it's not really true that "neo-classical economists tend to favor supply side interventions" - some do, some do not. And BTW Monetarism is concerned with the demand side.

Finally, the sentence "An outgrowth of neo-classical economics is rational expectations, which differs from neo-classical economics in that it does not see a micro-economic foundation for macro-economic behavior, and it emphasizes the strategies of rational economic actors in creating macro-effects" is nonsense. Rational expectations is the assumption, more or less, that in making predictions about the future people do not make systematic errors, only random ones. Micro-foundations is a seperate issue and this is just confusing things. In fact usually models with rational expectations DO try to be micro-foundations based which makes the above statement false.

This needs some fixin' up radek 21:47, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

why is there an economic problem

header anonymously added without content User:61.246.156.234 6 Nov 2005

Alternatives

If we're going to have "Alternatives" to "mainstream" economists and claim that "Socialist Economists" exist in academia, could we please have examples? If we can't have examples, could we not even list "alternatives". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 10lbs of potatoes (talk • contribs) 11 Nov 2005.

At one point I added a mention of post-autistic economics to the article, and it was promptly removed. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:47, 12 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It seems (and I need to spend time perusing the history of the article) either than few neoinstitutional, Keynesian and post-Keynesian, Marxist and post-Marxist, post-autistic, even post-modern scholars edit this article, or a neo-liberal, neo-conservative cabal is acting as a gatekeeper against any alternatives to the status quo model. From reading other articles, I would suspect the latter.--Imagine&Engage/Talk 11:57, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Two "See Also" section

Why are there two See Also sections on this entry? Unless anyone has a good reason for that to be the case, I'll change it in a while. Odd bloke 04:11, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Just do it. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:19, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

publication

would you like to publish this article? -- Zondor 22:16, 27 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Real Economy

Following changed to a redirect.

Real Economy can be defined as an economy taken in terms of the goods it produces or trades as opposed to money. E.g. If a country pays $60 for a barrel of oil the real trade has been that barrel of oil and the nominal has been the $60 traded.

I did not create this. WCFrancis 16:47, 5 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Welfare definition

I don't think the sentence "The welfare definition was still criticized as too narrowly materialistic. It ignores, for example, the non-material aspects of the services of a doctor or a dancer" is correct. There's nothing in Marshallian economics that says that only apples and oranges have value but not medical services or dance performances. They're all "goods". I don't know wherethe notion in the sentence comes from. Also, in general the description of the Welfare definition is pretty poor, since it doesn't even give the definition. I mean, at the very least utility and the concept of consumer surplus should be mentioned. radek

radek, here and above, some very good comments. I really encourage you to edit the article. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:36, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

these definitions arent the best...but it depends what school and or country you come from. I've learnt different variations to this and I will draft up a summary of edits. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Eco Nerd (talk • contribs) 24 Dec 2005.

Evolutionary economics

The remarks here on Evolutionary economics are almost incomprehensible; the article on the topic not much less so. In particular "Evolutionary economics often deals with the otherwise difficult questions related to the role of 'routines' and 'capabilities' in explaining heterogeneity in firm outcomes," is utterly jargon-laden. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:49, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah I had the same thought - in fact I thought the article was about Evolutionary Game Theory which is probably a lot more prevelant then what the article describes as Evolutionary Economics. For now, since I don't know much about this topic I'm gonna leave it alone though.radek

The value of an industry: Anti-vaccinationism

What is the annual € (Euro) value of the 30 + 300 main and subsidiary anti-vaccinationist websites' retail trade? is a question I posed on the talk page for Anti-vaccinationists. Any help would be appreciated. Midgley 19:35, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

oikos and nomos

I will add the proper translations of oikos (family, household, estate) and nomos (custom, law) so that it is clearer that both political economy (management of the state) and scarcity (macro and micro) are covered.

for nomos, see http://www.bible-researcher.com/hebraisms.html: "One example is the Greek word nomos, which is usually translated "law." In Greek the basic meaning of nomos is "custom" or "convention," for the Greeks held that law was simply codified custom."

for oikos, see http://www.oup.co.uk/isbn/0-19-815025-3: "The Oeconomicus is unique in Greek literature in combining a discussion of the proper management of an oikos (`family', `household', or `estate') and didactic material on agriculture within a Socratic dialogue."

Subsequently, I will add my definition of economics from DRGTPE, see http://www.dataweb.nl/~cool/Papers/Drgtpe/Index.html

Please note that there is a version available in Project Gutenberg, so that digital copying is allowed as long as the PG reference exists, while one is referred to the publisher for printed versions.

Colignatus 01:21, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

JEL classifications

I think there's a good case for adopting the JEL classification system [2] to define categories in economics. I'm not sure, though, how to implement this, or even how to go about getting some sort of consensus. Any ideas? JQ 09:47, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is the JEL system public domain, or might we have an intellectual property issue here? I ask because, for example, the Dewey Decimal system is not in the public domain. - Jmabel | Talk 01:17, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A good question. I'll see what I can find out JQ 02:29, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Update. I have received permission to use the JEL classifications, with attribution, which I think makes sense in any case. Does anyone have any concerns about this.? JQ 20:42, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bewildering introduction

Economics is said to be normative when it recommends one choice over another, or when a subjective value judgment is made. Conversely, economics is said to be positive when it tries objectively to predict and explain consequences of choices, given a set of assumptions such as observations or policy objectives. The choice of which assumptions to make in building a model as well as which observations to highlight is, however, normative.

I have real trouble understanding this. I'm going to generalise wildly and say most readers won't be able to make any sense of this either. Can we dumb this down a little? After all, this is the introduction section to a very broad & high level topic. WhiteCat 10:37, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is fine if you want to dumb this down. My main concern with the introduction is every few months someone who has only studies neoclassical economics comes in and rewrites the introduction as if they were rewriting the neoclassical economics page rather than the economics page. This is something to be avoided. Ruy Lopez 04:32, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

to objectively

Conversely, economics is said to be positive when it tries objectively to predict
Conversely, economics is said to be positive when it tries to objectively predict

The second one sounds better to me. --Gbleem 13:16, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

However, the second is a split infinitive, which some consider a no-no. Christopher Parham (talk) 07:14, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What about; Conversely, economics is said to be positive when it tries to predict objectively. -- ∞Dbroadwell 07:31, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

new addition

There is a constant creep in the introduction pushing neoclassical ideas. A recent addition the the third paragraph talks about scarcity and value based on price, and then refers to other theories as socialist. Actually, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and virtually all major economists up until the second half of the 19th century did not hold to this theory. All of this is fine to put into neoclassical economics but this is an article about economics, not neoclassical economics. I'm sure most people of the people adding this to the top have no idea that Adam Smith etc. did not believe the stuff they are putting up there and their narrow theory does not apply to economics in general. Ruy Lopez 06:38, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That section was clearly describing neoclassical economics. The sentence began "Critical assumptions of this paradigm...". One could perhaps object that (a) neoclassical economics is not the mainstream modern paradigm, or that (b) these are not in fact critical assumptions of neoclassical economics. Either of those objections, while silly, would at least be plausible. However, your objection makes no sense as the paragraph does not claim that theory to represent economics in general, or the beliefs of Smith or Ricardo. It quite explicitly represents the modern mainstream view. Do you object to that characterization?
I'm also unclear why you feel that it is incorrect to say that economic logic is not applied to problems involving choice under scarcity. What is objectionable about that statement? Christopher Parham (talk) 19:02, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

After Tax Analysis

Where does after tax analysis, an engineering economic method, fit in the the tree of economic articles? searches are drawing blanks ... if i have to create, where should it go? -- ∞Dbroadwell 07:13, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would put this in as a section of Valuation (finance) JQ 08:04, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It can be more than just strict value, Present worth, Future worth, and Annual worth can all be considered within after tax analysis ... Does Valuation (finance) still seen the best fit? -- ∞Dbroadwell 08:17, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

All of these are, or should be, considered in valuation. They are covered in Valuation_using_discounted_cash_flows, though the article needs some work. Tax is just one factor that should be taken into account. JQ 10:38, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh well, as a student in this area, I don't know enough to refactor the economic analysis docs. I count myself lucky that i was able to improve depreciation and MACRS with data from the IRS, (worked for Jackson Hewitt for a few years). -- ∞Dbroadwell 03:45, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Economics categories

I've been working on Category:Economics using the JEL classification codes. I've gone furthest with Category:Mathematical and quantitative methods (economics) including a lot of links to relevant articles at JEL_classification_codes#Mathematical_and_quantitative_methods_JEL:_C_Subcategories. The process showed up a lot of gaps in article coverage. Kevin kzollman made a nice template, which improved the look. I'd appreciate comments, suggestions and criticism. JQ 07:20, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good work....it looks very helpful. Kudos on finding a single scheme to employ as that will be very helpful in preserving a good category structure. Christopher Parham (talk) 16:40, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The criticism section

I would contend that the criticism section should not contain criticism of specific economic theories, mostly because these are not in fact criticisms of economics. They only make sense in the context of the specific theory to which they are directed. For instance, at the moment the article includes a critique of Pareto efficiency. But the article doesn't explain what pareto efficiency is, so anyone reading this (who presumably knows very little about the subject) is likely to be quite confused by this. Some theories are discussed in the article, and criticism about them should be included right there with the presentation of the theory. Christopher Parham (talk) 19:19, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not to mention the fact that things like the 'lump of labor fallacy' is NOT a fallacy economists often make, rather it is an idea which is revealed to be a fallacy by applying economic reasoning. Hence it is not a criticism of economics. I deleted the 'examples' section. They were just goofy.radek 01:30, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pat Devine

Would someone care to clean up Pat Devine and his socialist economics? Simesa 01:09, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fallacies etc...

M&Ms says; How is this a fallacy?

One criticism of relying solely on the criterion of Pareto efficiency is that it tends to support the status quo, since it is often difficult to find practical examples of changes in a society that do not harm at least one person. Still, if an economic system is to be devised, it is preferable that it result in outcomes that are Pareto efficient.

Firstly economists are not dependent on this criterion. It is reconised as an ideal. What is important is that economist or who ever creates policy tries to create "more pareto efficient moves". Basically economist realise that sometimes the person who has to make a decision and is caught between a rock and a hard. When this happens economist refer to a cost-benefit analysis which in keeping with pareto efficeincy they will try to make a decision on the best "possible" outcome.

It should be removed from the article as a fallacy or an attempt should be made to state that while decision makers do not have the option of making a 100% pareto efficeint move then they choose the next best "possible" option in accordance with the principal of efficeincy.