Introduction
Economics (/ˌɛkəˈnɒmɪks, ˌiːkə-/) is a social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyses what is viewed as basic elements within economies, including individual agents and markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyses economies as systems where production, distribution, consumption, savings, and investment expenditure interact; and the factors of production affecting them, such as: labour, capital, land, and enterprise, inflation, economic growth, and public policies that impact these elements. It also seeks to analyse and describe the global economy. (Full article...)
Selected general articles
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Modern Monetary Theory or Modern Money Theory (MMT) is a heterodox macroeconomic theory that describes the nature of money within a fiat, floating exchange rate system. MMT synthesizes ideas from the state theory of money of Georg Friedrich Knapp (also known as chartalism) and the credit theory of money of Alfred Mitchell-Innes, the functional finance proposals of Abba Lerner, Hyman Minsky's views on the banking system and Wynne Godley's sectoral balances approach. Economists Warren Mosler, L. Randall Wray, Stephanie Kelton, Bill Mitchell and Pavlina R. Tcherneva are largely responsible for reviving the idea of chartalism as an explanation of money creation.
MMT frames government spending and taxation differently to most orthodox frameworks. MMT states that the government is the monopoly issuer of its currency and therefore must spend currency into existence before any tax revenue can be collected. The government spends currency into existence and taxpayers use that currency to pay their obligations to the state. This means that taxes cannot fund public spending in a nominal monetary flow sense, as the government cannot collect money back in taxes until after it is has been issued into the economy. In this kind of monetary system, the government is never constrained in its ability to pay, rather the limits are the real resources available for purchase in the state's currency. (Full article...) -
Post-Keynesian economics is a school of economic thought with its origins in The General Theory of John Maynard Keynes, with subsequent development influenced to a large degree by Michał Kalecki, Joan Robinson, Nicholas Kaldor, Sidney Weintraub, Paul Davidson, Piero Sraffa, Jan Kregel and Marc Lavoie. Historian Robert Skidelsky argues that the post-Keynesian school has remained closest to the spirit of Keynes' original work. It is a heterodox approach to economics based on a non-equilibrium approach. (Full article...)
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Evolutionary economics is a school of economic thought that is inspired by evolutionary biology. Although not defined by a strict set of principles and uniting various approaches, it treats economic development as a process rather than an equilibrium and emphasizes change (qualitative, organisational, and structural), innovation, complex interdependencies, self-evolving systems, and limited rationality as the drivers of economic evolution. The support for the evolutionary approach to economics in recent decades seems to have initially emerged as a criticism of the mainstream neoclassical economics, but by the beginning of the 21st century it had become part of the economic mainstream itself.
Evolutionary economics does not take the characteristics of either the objects of choice or of the decision-maker as fixed. Rather, it focuses on the non-equilibrium processes that transform the economy from within and their implications, considering interdependencies and feedback. The processes in turn emerge from the actions of diverse agents with bounded rationality who may learn from experience and interactions and whose differences contribute to the change. (Full article...) -
Behavioral economics is the study of the psychological (e.g. cognitive, behavioral, affective, social) factors involved in the decisions of individuals or institutions, and how these decisions deviate from those implied by traditional economic theory.
Behavioral economics is primarily concerned with the bounds of rationality of economic agents. Behavioral models typically integrate insights from psychology, neuroscience and microeconomic theory. (Full article...) -
Thermoeconomics, also referred to as Bioeconomics or Biophysical Economics, is a school of heterodox economics that applies the laws of statistical mechanics to economic theory. Thermoeconomics is considered the statistical physics of economic value and is one subfield of econophysics, extenuating to Ecological Economics.
It is the study of the ways and means by which human societies procure and use energy and other biological and physical resources to produce, distribute, consume and exchange goods and services, while generating various types of waste and environmental impacts. Biophysical economics builds on both social sciences and natural sciences to overcome some of the most fundamental limitations and blind spots of conventional economics. It makes it possible to understand some key requirements and framework conditions for economic growth, as well as related constraints and boundaries. (Full article...) -
Slogan in Bhutan about gross national happiness in Thimphu's School of Traditional Arts.
Buddhist economics is a spiritual and philosophical approach to the study of economics. It examines the psychology of the human mind and the emotions that direct economic activity, in particular concepts such as anxiety, aspirations and self-actualization principles. In the view of its proponents, Buddhist economics aims to clear the confusion about what is harmful and what is beneficial in the range of human activities involving the production and consumption of goods and services, ultimately trying to make human beings ethically mature. The ideology's stated purpose is to "find a middle way between a purely mundane society and an immobile, conventional society."
The most fundamental feature of Buddhist economics is seeing "people interdependent with one another and with Nature." (Full article...) -
Eugen Böhm Ritter von Bawerk (short form: Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Austrian German: [fɔn bøːm ˈbaːvɛrk]; born Eugen Böhm, 12 February 1851 – 27 August 1914) was an Austrian-school intellectual and political economist who served intermittently as the Minister of Finance of Austria between 1895 and 1904. Böhm-Bawerk is also noted for writing extensive criticisms of Marxism. (Full article...) -
Richer countries tend to be happier than poorer countries (observations are lined up around an upward-sloping trend), and richer people within countries tend to be happier than poorer people in the same countries (arrows are consistently pointing northeast).
The economics of happiness or happiness economics is the theoretical, qualitative and quantitative study of happiness and quality of life, including positive and negative affects, well-being, life satisfaction and related concepts – typically tying economics more closely than usual with other social sciences, like sociology and psychology, as well as physical health. It typically treats subjective happiness-related measures, as well as more objective quality of life indices, rather than wealth, income or profit, as something to be maximized.
The field has grown substantially since the late 20th century, for example by the development of methods, surveys and indices to measure happiness and related concepts, as well as quality of life. Happiness findings have been described as a challenge to the theory and practice of economics. Nevertheless, furthering gross national happiness, as well as a specified Index to measure it, has been adopted explicitly in the Constitution of Bhutan in 2008, to guide its economic governance. (Full article...) -
Johann Heinrich von Thünen (24 June 1783 – 22 September 1850), sometimes spelled Thuenen, was a prominent nineteenth-century economist and a native of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, now in northern Germany.
Even though he never held a professorial position, Thünen had substantial influence on economics. He has been described as one of the founders of agricultural economics and economic geography. He made substantial contributions to economic debates on rent, land use, and wages. (Full article...) -
This is a list of important publications in economics, organized by field.
Some basic reasons why a particular publication might be regarded as important:- Topic creator – A publication that created a new topic
- Breakthrough – A publication that changed scientific knowledge significantly
- Influence – A publication which has significantly influenced the world or has had a massive impact on the teaching of economics.
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Georgist campaign button from the 1890s. The cat on the badge refers to the slogan "Do you see the cat?" from a story by Congressman James G. Maguire. He compared understanding the Single Tax to being able to make out a cat in a picture of a landscape.
Georgism, in modern times also called Geoism, and known historically as the single tax movement, is an economic ideology holding that persons should own the value that they produce themselves, while the economic rent derived from land—including from all natural resources, the commons, and urban locations—should belong equally to all members of society. Developed from the writings of American economist and social reformer Henry George, the Georgist paradigm seeks solutions to social and ecological problems based on principles of land rights and public finance that attempt to integrate economic efficiency with social justice.
Georgism is concerned with the distribution of economic rent caused by land ownership, natural monopolies, pollution rights, and control of the commons, including title of ownership for natural resources and other contrived privileges (e.g., intellectual property). Any natural resource that is inherently limited in supply can generate economic rent, but the classical and most significant example of land monopoly involves the extraction of common ground rent from valuable urban locations. Georgists argue that taxing economic rent is efficient, fair, and equitable. The main Georgist policy recommendation is a land value tax (LVT), the revenues from which can be used to reduce or eliminate existing taxes (such as on income, trade, or purchases) that are posited to be unfair and inefficient. Some Georgists also advocate the return of surplus public revenue to the people by means of a basic income or citizen's dividend. (Full article...) -
Gary Stanley Becker (/ˈbɛkər/; December 2, 1930 – May 3, 2014) was an American economist who received the 1992 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He was a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago, and was a leader of the third generation of the Chicago school of economics.
Becker was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992 and received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007. A 2011 survey of economics professors named Becker their favorite living economist over the age of 60, followed by Kenneth Arrow and Robert Solow. Economist Justin Wolfers called him "the most important social scientist in the past 50 years." (Full article...) -
Agent-based computational economics (ACE) is the area of computational economics that studies economic processes, including whole economies, as dynamic systems of interacting agents. As such, it falls in the paradigm of complex adaptive systems. In corresponding agent-based models, the "agents" are "computational objects modeled as interacting according to rules" over space and time, not real people. The rules are formulated to model behavior and social interactions based on incentives and information. Such rules could also be the result of optimization, realized through use of AI methods (such as Q-learning and other reinforcement learning techniques).
As part of non-equilibrium economics, the theoretical assumption of mathematical optimization by agents in equilibrium is replaced by the less restrictive postulate of agents with bounded rationality adapting to market forces. ACE models apply numerical methods of analysis to computer-based simulations of complex dynamic problems for which more conventional methods, such as theorem formulation, may not find ready use. Starting from initial conditions specified by the modeler, the computational economy evolves over time as its constituent agents repeatedly interact with each other, including learning from interactions. In these respects, ACE has been characterized as a bottom-up culture-dish approach to the study of economic systems. (Full article...) -
This is an incomplete alphabetical list by surname of notable economists, experts in the social science of economics, past and present. For a history of economics, see the article History of economic thought. Only economists with biographical articles in Wikipedia are listed here. (Full article...)
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Microeconomics analyzes the market mechanisms that enable buyers and sellers to establish relative prices among goods and services. Shown is a marketplace in Delhi.
Microeconomics is a branch of economics that studies the behavior of individuals and firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources and the interactions among these individuals and firms. Microeconomics focuses on the study of individual markets, sectors, or industries as opposed to the economy as a whole, which is studied in macroeconomics.
One goal of microeconomics is to analyze the market mechanisms that establish relative prices among goods and services and allocate limited resources among alternative uses. Microeconomics shows conditions under which free markets lead to desirable allocations. It also analyzes market failure, where markets fail to produce efficient results. (Full article...) -
Robert Merton Solow, GCIH (/ˈsoʊloʊ/; August 23, 1924 – December 21, 2023) was an American economist known for his studies of economic growth and the development of the Solow–Swan model, for which he won the 1987 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
He was Institute Professor Emeritus of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a professor from 1949 on. He was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal in 1961, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1987, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014. Four of his PhD students, George Akerlof, Joseph Stiglitz, Peter Diamond, and William Nordhaus, later received Nobel Memorial Prizes in Economic Sciences in their own right. (Full article...) -
Neo-Marxism is a collection of Marxist schools of thought originating from 20th-century approaches to amend or extend Marxism and Marxist theory, typically by incorporating elements from other intellectual traditions such as critical theory, psychoanalysis, or existentialism. Neo-Marxism comes under the broader framework of the New Left. In a sociological sense, neo-Marxism adds Max Weber's broader understanding of social inequality, such as status and power, to Marxist philosophy.
As with many uses of the prefix neo-, some theorists and groups who are designated as neo-Marxists have attempted to supplement the perceived deficiencies of orthodox Marxism or dialectical materialism. Many prominent neo-Marxists, such as Herbert Marcuse and other members of the Frankfurt School, have historically been sociologists and psychologists. (Full article...) -
Friedrich von Wieser (German: [fɔn ˈviːzɐ]; 10 July 1851 – 22 July 1926) was an early (so-called "first generation") economist of the Austrian School of economics. Born in Vienna, the son of Privy Councillor Leopold von Wieser, a high official in the war ministry, he first trained in sociology and law. In 1872, the year he took his degree, he encountered Austrian-school founder Carl Menger's Grundsätze and switched his interest to economic theory. Wieser held posts at the universities of Vienna and Prague until succeeding Menger in Vienna in 1903, where along with his brother-in-law Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk he shaped the next generation of Austrian economists including Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Joseph Schumpeter in the late 1890s and early 20th century. He was the Austrian Minister of Commerce from August 30, 1917, to November 11, 1918.
Wieser is renowned for two main works, Natural Value, which carefully details the alternative-cost doctrine and the theory of imputation; and his Social Economics (1914), an ambitious attempt to apply it to the real world. His explanation of marginal utility theory was decisive, at least terminologically. It was his term Grenznutzen (building on von Thünen's Grenzkosten) that developed into the standard term "marginal utility", not William Stanley Jevons's "final degree of utility" or Menger's "value". His use of the modifier "natural" indicates that he regarded value as a "natural category" that would pertain to any society, no matter what institutions of property had been established. (Full article...) -
Bernard Mandeville, or Bernard de Mandeville (/ˈmændəˌvɪl/; 15 November 1670 – 21 January 1733), was an Anglo-Dutch philosopher, political economist, satirist, writer and physician. Born in Rotterdam, he lived most of his life in England and used English for most of his published works. He became famous for The Fable of the Bees. (Full article...) -
John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, politician and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism and social liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy. Dubbed "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century" by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, he conceived of liberty as justifying the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control. He advocated political and social reforms such as proportional representation, the emancipation of women, and the development of labour organisations and farm cooperatives.
The Columbia Encyclopedia describes Mill as occasionally coming "close to socialism, a theory repugnant to his predecessors". He was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by his predecessor Jeremy Bentham. He contributed to the investigation of scientific methodology, though his knowledge of the topic was based on the writings of others, notably William Whewell, John Herschel, and Auguste Comte, and research carried out for Mill by Alexander Bain. He engaged in written debate with Whewell. (Full article...) -
The upper-left space depicts the type space and the upper-right space X the space of outcomes. The social choice function maps a type profile to an outcome. In games of mechanism design, agents send messages in a game environment . The equilibrium in the game can be designed to implement some social choice function .
Mechanism design (sometimes implementation theory or institution design) is a branch of economics and game theory. It studies how to construct rules—called mechanisms or institutions—that produce good outcomes according to some predefined metric, even when the designer does not know the players' true preferences or what information they have. Mechanism design thus focuses on the study of solution concepts for a class of private-information games.
Mechanism design has broad applications, including traditional domains of economics such as market design, but also political science (through voting theory). It is a foundational component in the operation of the internet, being used in networked systems (such as inter-domain routing), e-commerce, and advertisement auctions by Facebook and Google. (Full article...) -
John von Neumann (/vɒn ˈnɔɪmən/ von NOY-mən; Hungarian: Neumann János Lajos [ˈnɒjmɒn ˈjaːnoʃ ˈlɒjoʃ]; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian and American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist and engineer. Von Neumann had perhaps the widest coverage of any mathematician of his time, integrating pure and applied sciences and making major contributions to many fields, including mathematics, physics, economics, computing, and statistics. He was a pioneer in building the mathematical framework of quantum physics, in the development of functional analysis, and in game theory, introducing or codifying concepts including cellular automata, the universal constructor and the digital computer. His analysis of the structure of self-replication preceded the discovery of the structure of DNA.
During World War II, von Neumann worked on the Manhattan Project. He developed the mathematical models behind the explosive lenses used in the implosion-type nuclear weapon. Before and after the war, he consulted for many organizations including the Office of Scientific Research and Development, the Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory, the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. At the peak of his influence in the 1950s, he chaired a number of Defense Department committees including the Strategic Missile Evaluation Committee and the ICBM Scientific Advisory Committee. He was also a member of the influential Atomic Energy Commission in charge of all atomic energy development in the country. He played a key role alongside Bernard Schriever and Trevor Gardner in the design and development of the United States' first ICBM programs. At that time he was considered the nation's foremost expert on nuclear weaponry and the leading defense scientist at the U.S. Department of Defense. (Full article...) -
A mixed economy is an economic system that includes both elements associated with capitalism, such as private businesses, and with socialism, such as nationalized government services.
More specifically, a mixed economy may be variously defined as an economic system blending elements of a market economy with elements of a planned economy, markets with state interventionism, or private enterprise with public enterprise. Common to all mixed economies is a combination of free-market principles and principles of socialism. (Full article...) -
Oskar Ryszard Lange (Polish: [ˈlanɡɛ]; 27 July 1904 – 2 October 1965) was a Polish economist and diplomat. He is best known for advocating the use of market pricing tools in socialist systems and providing a model of market socialism. He responded to the economic calculation problem proposed by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek by claiming that managers in a centrally-planned economy would be able to monitor supply and demand through increases and declines in inventories of goods, and advocated the nationalization of major industries. During his stay in the United States, Lange was an academic teacher and researcher in mathematical economics. Later in socialist Poland, he was a member of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party. (Full article...) -
Heterodox economics family tree
Heterodox economics is a broad, relative term referring to schools of economic thought which are not commonly perceived as belonging to mainstream economics. There is no absolute definition of what constitutes heterodox economic thought, as it is defined in contrast to the most prominent, influential or popular schools of thought in a given time and place.
Groups typically classed as heterodox in current discourse include the Austrian, ecological, Marxist-historical, post-Keynesian, and modern monetary approaches. (Full article...)
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Did you know...
- ... that environmental economist V. Kerry Smith has been described as a "Renaissance Man of Economics"?
- ... that in the essay "Toward European Unity" George Orwell presumed that one of the greatest obstacles to a federal Europe would be economic pressure by the United States?
- ... that anti-Korean sentiment, due to South Korea's economic growth, motivated Djuna to write the sci-fi novel Counterweight?
- ... that scientists from the Institutum Divi Thomae raised silkworms at Saint Gregory Seminary during World War II as a form of economic warfare against Japan?
- ... that soprano Galina Pisarenko studied economics, English, and Norwegian at the same time she was studying to become a professional opera singer?
- ... that Francois Massaquoi, who studied economics at New York University, later led the Lofa Defense Force during the First Liberian Civil War?
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Selected images
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List of countries by gross domestic product (PPP) per capita in April 2022 (from Economics) -
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A 1638 painting of a French seaport during the heyday of mercantilism -
The circulation of money in an economy in a macroeconomic model. In this model, the use of natural resources and the generation of waste, such as greenhouse gases, is not included. (from Economics) -
São Paulo Stock Exchange in Brazil, an electronic trading network that brings together buyers and sellers through an electronic trading platform -
The supply and demand model describes how prices vary as a result of a balance between product availability and demand. The graph depicts an increase in demand from D1 to D2 and the resulting increase in price and quantity required to reach a new equilibrium point on the supply curve (S). -
Pollution can be a simple example of market failure; if costs of production are not borne by producers but are by the environment, accident victims or others, then prices are distorted. -
The U.S. unemployment rate from 1990 to 2022 (from Economics) -
The publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations in 1776 is considered to be the first formalisation of economic thought. -
A basic illustration of a business cycle (from Economics) -
Economists study trade, production, and consumption decisions, including those that occur in a traditional marketplace -
John Maynard Keynes, a key economics theorist (from Economics) -
An example production–possibility frontier with illustrative points marked (from Economics) -
An environmental scientist sampling water
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In the news
- 13 October 2025 – China–Netherlands relations
- The Dutch government invokes the Goods Availability Act to seize control of the Chinese-owned semiconductor manufacturer Nexperia, which is headquartered in Nijmegen, Gelderland, amid concerns that the company's governance "could pose a risk to Dutch and European economic security". (AP) (Financial Times)
- 29 September 2025 – German economic crisis, Workplace impact of artificial intelligence
- German airline Lufthansa announces they will cut 4,000 administrative positions by 2030 and replace them with artificial intelligence and digitization processes. (DW)
- 27 September 2025 – International sanctions against Iran, Nuclear program of Iran
- The United Nations reimposes economic and military sanctions on Iran after France, Germany, and the United Kingdom trigger the snapback mechanism under Security Council Resolution 2231 and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, citing Iran's nuclear escalation and lack of cooperation with the IAEA. (BBC News) (Reuters)
- 26 September 2025 – German economic crisis, Workplace impact of artificial intelligence
- German automotive supplier Bosch announces it will lay off 5,000 employees by 2030, including 3,800 in Germany. (DW)
- 24 September 2025 – Belarus–Poland relations
- Poland reopens its border with Belarus after closing them during Russia-led military exercises, citing reduced security risks and economic considerations. (Reuters)
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