What is economics?

• Econometrics

  Specializes in analyzing economic data
• People need to make choices about how to use their scarce resources
• Question like "Should people use money?"

  Is a normative question
• Positive economics

  Describes what is
• Fields economists study

  • Markets
  • Crime
  • War
  • The family
  • Religion
  • Culture
  • Politics
  • Law
  • Genetics
• Normative economics

  Argues for what ought to be
• Papers by various professionals are co-authored by economists due to the interdisciplinary nature of economics
• Microeconomics

  Studies the behavior of individual agents and markets
• Economists study the choices people make regarding their scarce resources
• The typical first student walks into his first economics class with very little idea of what economics is
• All economic questions fall into one of two categories: positive and normative
• Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources that have alternative uses
• Macroeconomics

  Studies the behavior of the entire economy
• Question like "Why do people use money?"

  Is a positive question
• The tools economists have developed to study human behavior have broad uses outside of traditional economics