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I'm a little concerned that Economics as a formal branch of mathematics is totally ignored here in favor of the social science, which came after the mathematical models. I'm also not sure it makes sense to call "scarcity" the fundamental concept underlying economics; I might have chosen rationality, comparability of values, or efficiency. No mention at all of important concepts like Pareto optimality, revealed preference, marginal utility? I'm just a dabbler, but surely there's someone here with a better background in mathematical economics that could do a reasonable job fixing this? -- LDC
Dated June 15, 2002 by User:Gretchen
You are quite right - there is a mathematical side of economics (or as one of my professors would say hardcore econometrics). I could write up about 30-40 pages and subpages on the subject. It will take up some time though, and the real problem is to stick to the theoretical side and not to engage oneself into discussions about which view is right or wrong - we would clearly miss the point here. Anyway, you are the first person that has borught this up and I'm grateful for that. WP
Someone wrote a bad review of economics section at kuro5hin:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2001/9/24/43858/2479/4#4
This comment could help the section to improve?
Dated September 12, 2003 by User:142.177.79.81
I put in a brief section on econometrics and added a little to the network effects section. Could add more, and may do so later. No guarantee it's totally precise and correct, but if I could do that off the top of my head, I'd probably be writing a textbook rather than updating Wiki b/c I felt like it ...
Some topics I think would be worthwhile (off the top of my head):
Game theory (linking to John Nash etc), pareto optimality, exchange rate theory (pegged, float, dirty-float), Bretton Woods, Neo-Keynesian school, Milton Friedman, the Austrian School, utility theory, revealed preference, cardinality and ordinality, simple supply and demand, oligopoloy / monopoly theory and competition, contestability, sunk costs, interest rates, money supply, the concept of a market, Walras and the concept of the auction, the business cycle, random walks, determinism and predictablity in economics (linking to chaos theory), financial markets, and theories of regulation and taxation.
Off the top of my head though - I might come back to do some of them if I've got the time. Haven't really thought about most of this stuff for a few years now ...
C
Dated: February 25, 2002 apparently by User:Conversion script
Yikes, I agree, those are all important. But let's get to neutral on the structure first. I think the Fundamentals and History section are better up front because they simply don't take sides or introduce 'capitalism vs. not' - actually they frame the idea of political economy almost perfectly, and show how animal (instinctual swaps) to hunter-gatherer to more complex trade build up... a very even beginning, but kind of out of place at the very very end - 24
That said, many people will come here wanting to do a crash course in Economics 101 and so political economy, fundamentals, foundations, etc., should be nothing but links up front for them... hard to know how to handle this.
On the other hand, some university-educated former peasant in Cambodia with 5000 words of English will come here wanting to know why "Economics" is destroying his village and country, and that market has less support from neutral sources.
I'd say, err heavily on the side of neutrality, since that improves articles and gives something that can't be provided elsewhere - a neutral point of view. Fundamentals would go first, mention the concerns of the non-capitalist schools, end with the concept of political economy, link off to capitalism, and then proceed to explain how that political economy's terms are applied in the present: the rest of the article. Is that fair enough?
Dated April 5, 2002 by User:24.150.61.63
My vote would be for keeping this article fairly short, and essentially just saying: here are all the articles we have on economics here in Wikipedia, with brief uncontroversial explanations. More controversial ideas, like, say, Marx vs Neoclassical, should go in the respective articles so that it is very clear who is saying what. Dated April 5, 2002 by User:Enchanter
If anything, I think the article could be slimmed down with, for example, some of the history stuff going in history of economic thought. Dated April 5, 2002 by
User:Enchanter
Rewrite improves it significantly, one nitpick: there is not enough focus on the thing economics is actually about - the formation, administration and optimization of *markets*, e.g. commodity markets. Mostly a matter of language, but all these players and studies are clustered around things, and those things are markets.
Another minor nitpick is that the Fundamentals section used to nicely bridge between the idea that economics is about the human ability to choose and trade, whereas the exactly same allocation of resources in other animals is guided mostly by instinct and is studied in biology and ecology. In the old wording, that bridged neatly to the hunter-gatherer society stuff. In the new one, it's a bit harder to tell how anyone could believe that hunter-gatherer society can be irrelevant if animal behavior and ecology are relevant... where is the bridge? This whole matter may need a rewrite to make the extreme views clear - I presume Margulis' flat statement that economics is ecology for humans is one such extreme. Is there another extreme saying that economics is the pinnacle of human activity coming directly from god, contrary in all ways to our animal nature, or whatever? Seems to me I've seen quotes like that...
Dated April 8, 2002 by User:24.150.61.63
Replaced scarcity, not because it isn't in the textbooks, but because "choices under scarcity" is just a verbose defintition of "trade". I vote for clarity.
"capitalism" doesn't belong on front page, i agree. Dated April 8, 2002 by User:142.150.129.50
Dated April 8, 2002 by User:24.150.61.63
-speculation: in twenty years, economics will be incorporated as a branch of general systems theory. (doesn't belong on front page either) Dated April 8, 2002 by User:142.150.129.50
Dated April 8, 2002 by User:24.150.61.63
MLP-Volt Dated April 8, 2002 by User:142.150.129.50
ALL of the above could use more citation and qualification, as it is very hard to write a totally neutral text that doesn't take sides on issues of state or values. And whose terms the classical, neoclassical, Marxist and green gurus would at least all recognize and not hack up. Which must be our objective, if we wish wiki to have the most citable and most trusted text on the subject anywhere in the world.
And if that's not what we want, why the hell are we here?
--- Anyway if you truly don't give a shit, thanks for your input so far. ;-) - 24
Dated April 8, 2002 by User:24.150.61.63
I'm a little concerned that Economics as a formal branch of mathematics is totally ignored here in favor of the social science, which came after the mathematical models. I'm also not sure it makes sense to call "scarcity" the fundamental concept underlying economics; I might have chosen rationality, comparability of values, or efficiency. No mention at all of important concepts like Pareto optimality, revealed preference, marginal utility? I'm just a dabbler, but surely there's someone here with a better background in mathematical economics that could do a reasonable job fixing this? -- LDC
Dated June 15, 2002 by User:Gretchen
Why not the allocation of resources, period? Whether they're 'scarce' or not isn't really relevant and too often a matter of opinion. There are plenty of doctors in the US, for example, but their distribution is hardly optimal. It's economic, however.
Dated July 29, 2003 by User:Socrates99
The first sentence has no verb: "Economics (formally known as political economy) the governance of the production, distribution and consumption of wealth and the various related problems of scarcity, finance, debt, taxation, labor, law, inequity, poverty, pollution, war, etc. " ...I am going to insert the word studies for now. Feel free to fix it differently. Kingturtle 04:54, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Someone wrote a bad review of economics section at kuro5hin:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2001/9/24/43858/2479/4#4
This comment could help the section to improve? joao
Dated September 12, 2003 by User:142.177.79.81
"Economists are sometimes referred to as Methodological Individualists."
Hmmm... It sounds like you're saying that the two terms are synonyms, which is certainly not the case. Are you saying that all economists are MIs? Or that some people say that all economists are MIs? From the 5 minutes of Googling on the subject, I don't see why economists should necessarily be MIs. Axlrosen 23:54, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Dated December 11, 2003 by User:142.177.109.130
The article as it stands in December 2003 is now balanced by "framing economics", an introduction that lays out the reasons why economic models do not fully explain human behavior (failing to deal with ethics, ecology and energy economics, how labour and welfare are actually produced, etc.) This could be abbreviated and some of it moved as criticism to Homo economicus. However, these qualifying statements need to be made, and stronger qualifying statements can be found at http://natcap.org - somewhere in there you can find a list of "the 15 bad assumptions made by economics itself."
The question of political economy as questioning the assumptions versus economics as putting them into models is also dealt with in that section.
Unfortunately, after the "framing economics" section, the "economics is real" view kind of takes over. It's telling that there is no article on Socialist economics or even labour economics, welfare economics. There's some on feminist economics and some on Marxist economics at Marxism, but, all told, these subjects are not taken seriously enough.
It would be good to see them treated as carefully as energy economics, green economics and human development theory are. Even if most of what is in these older theories ( ecological economics, feminist economics, labour economics, welfare economics, and Karl himself) is now subsumed into the more recent theories, they remain of historical interest. David Ricardo is broadly considered the founder of labour economics... and very recent figures like Amartya Sen associate themselves with welfare economics. So you cannot have good coverage of economics without at least explaining what these theories are and how they settled the social/economic and ethical/economic questions.
Law and economics should also be mentioned as a way to apply economic models to law. It may be that these methods do not describe choice in the real world at all, but only in artifical/industrial/legal worlds created by humanity.
Dated December 11, 2003 by User:142.177.109.130
Dated December 16, 2003 by User:142.177.75.45
Removed:
I agree sorta with the premis, and there has been a controversy over applying economics to various decisions. On the other hand this is not balanced as written, and I am not sure what a supply and demand question is. I personally think that controversy over economics should not go as part of the initial summary, but should instead go into a seperate section on the page if such is considered necessary. Jrincayc 21:57, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Dated December 16, 2003 by User:142.177.75.45
was replaced with:
The first actually makes sense to me. Is there any advantage to the second? It looks like it might be more precise, but it doesn't make much sense to me. Jrincayc 14:24, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)
The original wording is both weaker and less precise. First Marxists don't "feel", their theory states clearly. Second, the original wording does not say why Marxist economics says as it does. Yes the terms are used in the particular marxist sense, which is why their are quotes aroud them.
No more than one can explain Smith without explaining supply and demand in context. Some words are primary. For marx, dialectical struggle over the means of production is, almost, as close to an axiom as one will get. Perhaps you could find someone more sympathetic to marxism than I am to find a simple way of explaining the theory. Absent this we should, at least, let Marx speak for himself.
This quote from the Marxism page says very much the same thing as my earlier revision:
"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. "
All I've done is paraphrase this rather famous 'graf.
Stirling Newberry 03:22, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)
One word I have been banishing from economics pages is "modern". It's kind of ridiculous, in most countries you have a Marxist, Keynesian, monetarist and perhaps other analyses battling it out in the political sphere. Considering that economics is a SOCIAL science and not a real science, it seems to me the idea that say Milton Friedman's ideas are "modern" and Keynes (and his followers like Paul Krugman) and Marx (and his followers like the Monthly Review) are old-hat, classical, outdated and so forth seems to be slightly POV. Post-Galileo, most people will agree to a consensus on real sciences like astronomy, but a social science like economics will always be fraught with different camps as long as economic classes exist, and implying that economics is more like a science (once they dropped the word political from political economy and added the -ics), and that the ideas of Milton Friedman financed by the idle classes are "modern", and that Keynesian or Marxian ideas supported by many workers are outdated in some manner doesn't seem to fit. -- Lancemurdoch 04:19, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)
There is a clear dividing line between economics in the 19th century, which based its practice in description, and the modern view which takes economics to be mathematically based - which is not to say scientific or not. This difference is primary, and not based on monetarism versus Keynesian theory. The basis of economics as the choice between scarce outcomes is something which no school of market economics seriously disputes. Now what, exactly, is scarce, and what the fundamental scarcities are, is open to enormous dispute, but "a form" is both vague and does not correctly capture that the overwhelming consensus among practicing economists is for the definition offered, which, literally, heads just about every text book on economics currently published.
This differs strongly from the 19th century defintions of political economy, which treated the subject as based in description of human activity - even if the ultimate subject of choices between mutually exclusive outcomes was the central question of the work.
I am all in favor of not piling on wasted adjectives which only serve to advance one particular view over others, but here, the word modern is used in its absolutely proper sense as the current tradition and theory of a discipline, and not being attached to a particular school, though I did note in the definition that it was modern market economics - that is all schools of economics centered on the operation of markets.
changing it back, there was no NPOV violation here.
Stirling Newberry 06:07, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)
____
If other people are happy with it I am.
Stirling Newberry 06:55, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)
We really need an equation editor. This subject needs to have at least the simple equations laid out.
Some topics I think would be worthwhile (off the top of my head):
Game theory (linking to John Nash etc), pareto optimality, exchange rate theory (pegged, float, dirty-float), Bretton Woods, Neo-Keynesian school, Milton Friedman, the Austrian School, utility theory, revealed preference, cardinality and ordinality, simple supply and demand, oligopoly / monopoly theory and competition, contestability, sunk costs, interest rates, money supply, the concept of a market, Walras and the concept of the auction, the business cycle, random walks, determinism and predictablity in economics (linking to chaos theory), financial markets, and theories of regulation and taxation.
Off the top of my head though - I might come back to do some of them if I've got the time. Haven't really thought about most of this stuff for a few years now ...
C
Replaced scarcity, not because it isn't in the textbooks, but because "choices under scarcity" is just a verbose defintition of "trade". I vote for clarity.
The first sentence has no verb: "Economics (formally known as political economy) the governance of the production, distribution and consumption of wealth and the various related problems of scarcity, finance, debt, taxation, labor, law, inequity, poverty, pollution, war, etc. " ...I am going to insert the word studies for now. Feel free to fix it differently. Kingturtle 04:54, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Removed:
I agree sorta with the premis, and there has been a controversy over applying economics to various decisions. On the other hand this is not balanced as written, and I am not sure what a supply and demand question is. I personally think that controversy over economics should not go as part of the initial summary, but should instead go into a seperate section on the page if such is considered necessary. Jrincayc 21:57, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Dealing with the impact of energy on economics is certainly worth treatment, but then, this is an area where I have some degree of expertise. Wiki's not paper, we can cover the emerging ideas in xaos theory and scarcity which a more staid publication could not. I'd like to open a discussion on how to do this, without distracting from the presentation of the status quo, which, after all, is what people go to an encyclopedia for.
Stirling Newberry 23:04, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Economic Theory As A Degenerate Science
Steve Keen a senior lecturer in economics in the University of Western Sydney claims in his book "debunking economics" that current mainstream economic theory is a degenerate science closer to the field of astrology than the field of astronomy. Keen argues that the very mathematical foundation of economics is flawed. While the theory of supply and demand is correct, the mathematics is used incorrectly in the basic foundation of economics.
In particular, the supply and demand graphs shows two straight lines intersecting each other. The point where the straight upward slooping supply line intersect the downward slooping demand line is where the economic exchange is suppose to take place.
The problem as immediately spotted by physicists, mathematicians and engineers is that in real life, lines representing natural phenomena is never a straight line but curves.
Keen says, the market demand curve can’t be smooth – at best it’s jagged, going up and down with price – while the supply "curve" is at best a horizontal line which probably slopes down rather than up.
(This guy Keen is a quack. He is claiming that firms will want to produce more product when price (and profits) goes down and they will want to produce less when selling price (and profits) goes up! He also claims the demand curve rises in places. For this to happen the income effect would have to be greater than the substitution effect and there is very little empirical evidence to support this (see here for an explanation). What actually happens is that the demand curve falls at varying rates (see here). mydogategodshat 11:25, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC) )
If the supply and demand graphs are calculated properly with actual curved supply and demand lines, then an amazing solution may occur. The supply curve may intersect the demand curve at multiple points. That is to say that there may be multiple solutions or points of stability (known as attractors).
Conscious that he might be dismissed as a ranting marginalised lunatic, Keen says his arguments are not based on ideologies, but on mathematics.
Keen says, most introductory economics textbooks present a sanitised, uncritical rendition of conventional economic theory, and the courses in which these textbooks are used do little to counter this mendacious presentation. Students might learn that "externalities" reduce the efficiency of the market mechanism but they will not learn that the "proof" that markets are efficient is itself flawed.
The minority which continues on to further academic training is taught the complicated techniques of economic analysis, with little to no discussions of whether these techniques are actually intellectually valid. The enormous critical literature is simply left out of advanced courses while glaring logical shortcomings are glossed over with specious assumptions. However, most students accept these assumptions because their training leaves them both insufficiently literate and insufficiently numerate.
Equilibrium, he says, has become a religion – anything which is non market is not as good as anything which is market, therefore every move we make towards market will make us better, so it’s an ideology not a reality.
The reality is that the market doesn’t work in equilibrium and that’s the thing that economists can’t comprehend. They are stuck in a 19th century mathematical world, where everything works in equilibrium and they can’t cope with anything other than that.
The main problem I have with this material is that it is not a critique of economics. It is a critque of the simplifing assumptions used in first year economics to make difficult concepts easier for new students to understand. It is true that in first year economics curves are linear, there is no mention of multiple equilibria, all supply curves slope upwards to the right, and there are many assumptions made that are not critically assessed. But when you go beyond first year, these simplifying assumptions are relaxed. Demand curves have price points. It is possible to have a downward sloping to the right supply curve, but only in very resticted situations (only industry supply curves, not individual; only in the long run, not in the short run; and only when the long run average cost curve is decining over all relevent output levels). There are instances of multiple equilibria (labour markets and foriegn trade markets).
This article needs a "Criticisms" section, but this is not it. mydogategodshat 21:22, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The one valuable point made by this contributor is that economist generally do not adequately assess the fundamental assumptions upon which models are built. mydogategodshat 21:34, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Thank you, Mydogate, for putting this in talk. Wikipedia managed to become very slow for me right before I had to leave for work. I think Steve Keen has some points, but I think he is exaggerating when he states that economics as a whole is degenerate. I don't think that the critque should go on the front economics section, but I think either an article on Steve Keen, or on problems with typical economic assumptions would be fine to create as a separate article. Jrincayc 03:06, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Added "Critics" to the "Also See" section. Added Steve_Keen as a link to a separate wiki page. - drnobody
---
Quotes from above: "Replaced scarcity, not because it isn't in the textbooks, but because "choices under scarcity" is just a verbose defintition of "trade". I vote for clarity. "
"I think the point of economics is to create those verbose definitions. It's not just "choice under scarcity" but also the NATURE of choice, the NATURE of scarcity. The Fundamentals section is good but has to make this clearer, and come up front. "
Quote 1 is incorrect, choice has little to do with trade and everything to do with scarcity. Choice occurs directly because of scarcity, since if I had everything i wanted (no scarcity) then I would no longer need to *choose* between alternatives. To go further, choice is usually considered a 1 person exercise while trade is at least 2, or more.
I glaced over the article and I see that a lot of stuff in political economy isn't included in here and could, and should, be moved over. -- ShaunMacPherson 13:00, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
--- A quote: "Economics explicitly does not deal with free abundant inputs -"
I am not sure if this sentence is correct, but at the very least the term 'abundant' is incorrect. The opposite of scarce (finite) is not 'abundant' but closer to limitless / infinite.
As for free, economics looks at free inputs all the time, sun, air are usually considered 'free' for the taking. As well as pure public goods are necessarily 'free goods', usually paid for by tax however, because no market can exist for a pure public good (i.e. national defense).
I have removed the following:
[edit]Economics is a social science that studies human resource making activity. Humans make resources to support their life. Human life on this Earth needs supply. The three basic supply, food, clothing and housing then a wide variety other goods, products and services. The supply, these resources is made in the economy of a society. Economics studies how the economy works. How the products, goods and serives are made, traded and distributed.
Maybe this was written by a non-english writer, but I have to challenge some of the terminology. Generally in economics, resources are things that are used rather than made. Also to say that economics studies how things are made is misleading. The study of how things are made is industrial engineering. Economics studies how things are made only in the very restricted sense of how scarce resources are allocated in a production process. I do however agree tautologically that "economics studies how the economy works". :)
I could as well just edit it, but I'd guess editing wars are frowned upon. So I'm new around here, and, as a non-logged in user, I made some minor changes to the article, most notably in the definitions of microeconomics and macroeconomics. The phrase "which constructs economic phenomena from the behavior of individual actors and firms" was changed to "which constructs economic behavior from the behavior of individual actors and firms" - which makes no sense.
Previously, the page said something about "microeconomics studying the behavior of individual actors", which would rule general equilibrium theory out.
I'm thinking of "Microeconomics builds a theory of economics phenomena starting from its microfoundations - the behaviour of individual families and firms". Somehow, it seems the word "phenomena" is frowned upon, but it's really precisely what I mean here - see phenomenology.
If the talk pages don't show any activity on this in a few hours, I'll edit it again. The old version was imprecise, and the version which replaced mine makes no sense.
I am a "newbie" so you can take what I have to say with however much salt you care to.
I was startled, first of all, to find that the word "capitalism" is nowhere actually mentioned in the body of Wikipedia's Economy citation (except in the reference list at the bottom). Capitalism seems instead to have the status of a subcategory in the Business citation. Marxist, Marxism, Marxian, Karl Marx, on the other hand /are/ cited, some more than once. Whatever happened to good old capitalism guys?
Stirling Newberry Most of the article is a discussion of capitalist economics - starting with Smith, Ricardo, moving through Marshall and Keynes, with some references to later work. However it is worth pointing out the difference between market and capitalism - the two are not the same, and emphasizing that economics is focused primarily on capitalist markets, and to a lesser extent socialist ones.
The authors seem to have carried NPOV to a new and near pathological extreme, as though in an article on psychotherapy, Freud had been banished to the Medicine category and the text was chock full of Jungian philosophy.
Stirling Newberry I think this statement is a bit extreme and insulting.
Your article seems more of a battleground than a source of information on Economics aimed at someone that actually wants to know how it is practised in the world as we know it. Last I looked capitalism was /the/ major economic system on the planet and the End of History was nigh. No problem with discussing its shortcomings but shouldn't one at least mention it?
Stirling Newberry And this one definitely is. The article goes into great detail about the primary activity of economists - making models, collecting data and using supply and demand curves with measurable variables to understand collective behavior.
Wgoetsch 22Mar04
2 April 2004
In our country we haven't had luck to have Ludwig von Mises or any other "Austrian Economist", who would understand topics that no one can understand without embracing "Economic Subjectivism" (see my refutation of its refutation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Economic_subjectivism ) instead of "Economic Objectivism", and we experienced the hyperinflation similar to the German's hyperinflation in 1920's before the collapse of Communism in our country.
After that our economists have been luckily smart enough and didn't accept Monetarism (that was suggested by USA economists) which destroyed some Latino-American economies.
Here is something about "Austrian Economics" that I propose to be inserted after the paragraph on Marxism in the chapter Development of economic thought:
British " objective-cost theory of value" conceptualization inadvertedly led to the "double valuedness" of any object. Any product had two kinds of values at the same time (bread, for example, though higher in " use value" than diamonds, was somehow lower in " exchange value").
This very concept of 'double valuedness' enabled Marx to conceptualize market economy as internally contradictive economic system, a system badly misdirecting resources into " production for profit" (by exploatating the very difference between the " exchange value" and " use value") instead of directing resources (which then communist states did by central planning or by self-managed arrangements in communist Yugoslavia) for " production for use".
As can be seen, British economists' " objective-cost theory of value" conceptualization led to rise of the theory of capitalist exploitation of both natural resources and working class, while they did not deal with the same topics as Marx at all, such as money, capital or business cycles, there were at the same time Austrian economics (founded by Carl Menger who wrote his "Principles of Economics" at roughly the same time as Marx did his "Kapital"), which were first to clash directly with "double valuedess" approach.
Hyperinflation (which later destroyed German economy and made dissapointed German people quite eager to accept Adolf Hitler as their rescuer) was spared the Austrian country mainly due to this Austrian economics approach in 1920s led by Ludwig von Mises, who rejected "double valuedness".
With annexation of Austria by Germany and Nazi terror Ludwig von Mises emigrated to the United States. There, however, at a time when every communist and social democratic exile from Europe was given a high academic post, the leading Austrian economist Mises was refused such a job, even more, the dean of New York University's Graduate School of Business, Sawhill, has lobbied good students not to take Mises's 'right-wing, reactionary' classes. Neither Mises lived to see the fellow Austrain economist Friedrich Hayek wining the Nobel prize in 1974.
Even in US it seems the "Austrian Economics" didn't get the deserved space (See: http://www.gmu.edu/departments/ihs/hsr/s97hsr.html#austrianstates ) and is still a "missing link" even in Wikipedia's Development of economic thought.
A reader from a Post-Communist country P.S. I'd like to appologize for my English. My writing in English language is not very good. I understand it very well, though.
Stirling Newberry All I can say is "are you joking?" the economics sections of Wikipedia lean very heavily towards the Austrian school, much more so than practicing economicsts. There is ample coverage - in some cases more than ample coverage - of Austrian concepts, links to mises and other liberatarian/austrian/"classical liberal" sites. The mainstream of economics is focused on mathematical modelling based on collection of data. The Austrian school is certainly part of the overall economic dialog and is referenced. If someone has specific concepts which are important that need to be included, by all means do so.
A Reader from a Post-Communist Country 11 Avg 2004
There is clear enough distinction between all the economics sections of Wikipedia and the particular section, the 4th Chapter - Development of economic thought section! Or it is not?? Only this particular section was what I have commented.
And, I must ask you, if this particular section is leaning heavily towards the Austrian school, as Stiling Newberry is trying to convince me (it is I, who should ask him his "are you joking?" question), why he doesn't say something about the actual leaning of this - remember - particular section towards a particular School of Thought, namely the School that inspired the economic experiments that have put many Central European (as well East German) countries that were once parts of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and before WW II economically not so behind their neighbouring countries, now in year 2004 in a position where Old Europe is afraid of our workers seeking better economic conditions elsewhere because of consequences of this economic experiments.
Any statistical analysis of the text (for example the ratio between the number of words that are used in paragraphs that talk about the particular School that you academics in the capitalist countries who yourself never had to live its experiments, love to write about in this particular section, and the number of words about Austrian Economics in this particular section) can be used to show it. In the following paragraph I have counted 129 words!:
Then there is another 78 words added at the end of another paragraph that IMHO should only say something about whether economics can be applied to all forms of society or not, without any particular School's opinion... however there is added an opinion of one School only. It is I, again, who should state "I find this bias a little puzzling myself" statement, not CSTAR (or Newberry or any of you - academics in the capitalist countries - who, let me repeat, never had to live its experiments! And who never were forced to seek better economic conditions after the fall of some Utopic ideas of some School.)
And the closest to the mere mentioning of existence of the Austrian School (actually it mentions only general approach of supply-side, nothing more) is the following statement:
As if there wouldn't be enough distasteful, we have to read yet more opinions held by Utopians in the same section again.
yours truly, A Reader from a Post-Communist Country P.S. I recommand you academics from Not-Post-Communist-Countries that you come live experiments of the Schools you lean to and then seek better economic conditions in your neighbouring countries, if they would want you at all. 11 Aug 2004
Economists believe that incentives and preferences (tastes) together play an important role in shaping decision making. Sometimes a preference relation can be represented by a utility function. Concepts from the Utilitarian school of philosophy are used as analytical concepts within economics, though economists appreciate that society may not adopt utilitarian objectives.
Could we get rid of Economists believe-- This reminds me of a church. Shouldn't this be something like:
From the distinctive point of view of economic analysis incentives and preferences (tastes) together play an important role in decision making.
Also what meaning does the word "shaping" convey in the original version of the article? Wouldn't it be more informative to refer to a process of decision making (this I admit is idiosyntractic -- I believe in a process view human activity). CSTAR 16:52, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
Economists doesn't believe.... They postulate that incentives and preferences etc. -- 212.45.33.21 17:04, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I have just created a book on Economics from a mathematical perspective. It has no content yet and help would be greatly appreciated, http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Economics:_A_Mathematical_Aproach.
I need to reference an article or section that is not present, one that explains the means by which costs are externalized and the effects of this. Examples could be the externalization of health costs by the coal industry or the externalization of costs of defending, suppressing, and replacing countries and governments to ensure cheap motor fuels in the US. I could write something about this but it would not be from the viewpoint of an economics expert. Please notify me when this is available so that I can link to it. Thanks, Leonard G. 21:57, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)
But isn't this picture at the top completely misleading? Or am I just being too picky? CSTAR 01:24, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
For about 34 minutes, someone replaced the beginning of the article with this:
Some of that material may be valuable to work in. Much of it seems to be ripped from somewhere (The click here note gives a clue towards that). Also the warning at the end of major changes seems to be ignorant, purposely or not, of the collaborative editing process we have here. I thought the matrial was, at a minimum, worth discussion. - Taxman 15:09, Jul 16, 2004 (UTC)
Tout le monde loue - pour leurs qualités pédagogiques, leur accessibilité et leur absence de formalisme - les ouvrages sur les "principes de l'économie" publiés ces dernières années par des auteurs américains réputés, tels Mankiw et Stiglitz. Couleurs, photos, extraits d'articles de journaux sur des problèmes d'actualité, raisonnements simples et décomposés à l'extrême : le produit est alléchant. Ces ouvrages connaissent des tirages très importants : Mankiw a touché plus de 2 millions de dollars avant même d'avoir écrit une seule ligne...
Everyone hails, by their pedagogical style, accessibility and absence of formalism, works on "Economic Principles, published in recent years by well-known american authors, such as Mankiw and Stigliz. Lots of color, photos, excerpts of journal articles on current day problems, simple and extremely incremental reasoning. These works have large numbers of copies sold; Mankiw has earned 2 million dollars even before writing a line
CSTAR 20:15, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
But it gets a great deal of it wrong - economics, if by this you mean the study of economic behavior - goes back to Plato and Aristotle, who saw it through the tension between individual gain and the necessity for collective defense (see the evolution of the polis in Plato where the "feverish city" falls under attack because it has not ability to unify and defend itself). This viewpoint is the subtext of Wealth of Nations - note the title, the Wealth of Nations - and the importance of a social decision to engage in market behavior, which Smith outlines in Book I, and also in his other work. The name alone "Post Autism Economics" should be a clue that the writers of it are, shall we say, fringy. References mean nothing - every fringe group can site passages which show the evils of the past and where they came from. It's easy. As for "the study of exchange" and the "study of production" - that's the rough and ready distinction between "economics" and "political economy". Political economy assumes that political, collective, decision making manifests itself in measurable ways which alter economic relationships. What I don't see is anything in the passage which hasn't been dealt with in the various wiki articles. What's documentable here? A web site that declares economists and mathematicians are autistic? Replaced with what? A vague sense that people want something different? When the POV has something to document, and a visible sign that it has adherents and a self sustaining discourse, then it's worth documenting.
I'm very sympathetic to challenges to neo-classical economics - being the author of one - but by the same token, we have to have something to document here. If you feel the criticisms of the neo-classical synthesis need to be strengthened with some of the citations, by all means go ahead and do that. That's something that is documentable: POVs that question exchange as the basis. Stirling Newberry 14:06, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I would like to suggest we put the pictures up for a vote - enough people seem to have enough strong feelings about this to make it worth reaching a consensus. Stirling Newberry 16:17, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Suggested have been:
As well as profiles of Ricardo, Marx and Smith.
Any others? Stirling Newberry 16:19, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I would add Keynes, since he basically started macroeconomics. In terms of graphs, I would use a supply and demand graph, since it's simple and ubiquitous and it's the first thing every intro student learns. All the ones at supply and demand are icky and pixellated, though. -- Taak 22:13, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
CSTAR 02:45, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Picture with color
CSTAR 04:43, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Should I replace the supply-demand picture? CSTAR 20:21, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Last try
CSTAR 00:09, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Hello, I think this sentence is incorrect: "There is some degree of tension between economics and ethics, another of the most basic social sciences, which tends to avoid quantification and emphasize balances of rights." Ethics isn't a social science, i.e. it hardly, if at all, conducts experiments or studies empirical findings as a science does. It is a humanity, like philosophy, in that it uses rational arguements to make its case. If it is agreed, then let's change social science to humanity or other equilivant word. -- ShaunMacPherson 06:33, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Someone inserted a query about the phrase "the economy of polities" into the article, wondering if it should read "the economy of politics." I don't know the actual quote, but from context the answer is probably that it's correct as written. I believe "polity" is a political entity such as a state. The use is therefore appropriate. Isomorphic 02:50, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
What's POV about In contrast, most of today's currencies including the US dollar are fiat money meaning it has no intrinsic value?
First the definition of the US dollar as a "fiat currency" is debateable - some say it is, and some say it isn't. Intrinsic value is another notion that is economically debatible, since many economists, do not believe there is any such thing as "intrinsic" value. It is certainly not an assertion to be made in a caption. It's POV - namely gold bug POV. Stirling Newberry 14:40, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Would it be safe to say that most currencies today are not directly pegged to the value of precious metals? -- Taak 04:31, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It would also be safe to assert that most money isn't in the form of coinage. But the point is... What? Is this the most important fact about money? Or more to the point, is it the most important fact about money in relation to the discipline of economics? Or is it something that some people want to point out for their own POV? We've got gold standard, Austrian economics, money, fiat money, paper money, Bretton Woods, supply side economics, Austrian economics macroeconomics -- plenty of places to go into the subject in as much detail as is required for any one. If people feel it is important, add a sentence on monetary basis and the arguments over central banking and legal tender... Stirling Newberry 04:42, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The sentence regarding Say's Law struck me as cumbersome and in need of a little improvement. icut4u 22:03, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Ethics is most certainly not a branch of the social sciences (unless one really means an ethnographic study of moral codes, which does not seem to be the case). Not in any university I know, and not even on the social science article the sentence references and that is linked hereto. Ethics is part of the humanties, specifically, philosophy. In fact, there is also a kind of quantificationin branches of ethics...for example, the application of game theory (Nozick, Williams, and others) and, in metaethics, where philosophers make use of formal, logical construction. I corrected the sentence to reflect these facts. icut4u 04:32, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Phillips Curve:
Phillips Curve shows the relation ship between increase in money wage and the unemployment rate.It depict very important point about the rate of increase of inflation and the rate of unemployment.This is really a wonderful theory and talk about the historical data and its relationship with unemployment.The following diagram represent this relationship
Faraz Akhtar
That was recently added to the article as a 'new' field of economics. For one thing I don't think that is new or a valuable addition, but I didn't want to unilateraly revert. What do others think? - Taxman 17:05, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)
I look at the first sentence from October and it seems much better. It seems to have gotten worse since then. Or at least more narrowly defined, it seems to define economics as a certain school or schools sees it. It was broaded before. That it is focused on price was added since October, but is all economics focused on price? The early economists from Adam Smith to David Ricardo and so forth were not really price-obsessed, and there continues to exist a focus on other aspects of economics such as say production, although of course probably not among economic professors at American business schools. It also adds that this is "seen through the lens of allocation of scarce resources". This is another definition narrowing it in terms of economic schools. Some people might see it through the lens of the value provided by labor.
The paragraph after that is a recent addition (last two months), which also explains economics through the lens of one particular economic school. I'll deal with that later. Ruy Lopez 07:06, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I've created a section called "Schools of economic thought" with a subsection called "Neo-classical economics" into which I've moved some of the neo-classical assertions to. The opening four paragraphs now seem basically broad enough to encompass all of economics, but two paragraphs there previously asserted ideas of the neo-classical theory which I moved to the sub-section. Ruy Lopez 12:55, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I'm doing a little work here as part of the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. This article is listed on User:Taxman/Featured articles with references problems. Maurreen 09:33, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Recently added: "It studies allocation mechanisms that describe how to distribute limited resources among unlimited wants of people." So would there be no "economics" of a situation of abundance, such as the Potlatch cultures of the Northwest Natives? -- Jmabel | Talk 04:02, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)
The description for Neo-classical economics starts "Neo-classical economics begins with the premise that resources are scarce and that it is necessary to choose between competing alternatives." Frankly I just don't get it - does that imply that Keynsian Economics starts from a different premise, a premise that resources are not scarce? Does Marxian Economics start from the premise that one can in fact choose multiple alternatives? (Schroedinger's cat eat your heart out - we can have our cake and eat it too... At the same time!) Rather, I think that this characterisation of Neo-classical economics may be just the tiniest bit misleading. - JS 05:41, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Material flow:
Extractors => Raw Materials => Raw Material Transport => Processors => Product => Distribution => Consumption
According to what I understand to be the "laws" of economics, under the following circumstances one would expect a certain result:
1.) A raw material (crude oil)is provided at market price under production volumes, but not prices, determined by a cartel ( OPEC) to a number of processors (manufactures, in this case a number of refiners) who provide a product for distribution to consumers (various products, but predominantly motor fuels). End consumer market prices are set by supply and demand, as are raw materials prices to the processors under the production restraints imposed by the cartel. Assume that the flow-through and pricing have stabilized.
2.) a processor is disabled. Under the laws of economics (as I understand them), the price of the raw material (crude oil) should decrease (since demand is now decreased) or remain constant (if supply of raw material is reduced by producers in response to changed market conditions) and the price of the product should increase (assuming constant demand and reduced supply due to reduced supply from the processors.
Recently, there was a refinery explosion which disabled about 3% of the U.S. processing of petroleum products.
Contrary to the expectations outlined above, the price of crude oil ("Raw Materials" above) increased.
This seems counter-intuitive. Can any expert explain this in rational market terms?
Thanks in advance, Leonard G. 03:51, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
This is the first time I've posted anything on Wikipedia before, but I had to answer Leonard's question.
If a processor is disable, demand doesn't shift back, supply shifts back. This is the cause for the price increase. It is also, to an extent, the main ideas behind Reaganomix, Thatcherism, and suppl-yside economics, only with the AD/AS model instead of a simple basic supply/demand graph.
I might as well pose a question of my own. Higher taxes on the rich and less on the poor are supposed to help income disparity right? Well, when I look at the basic supply/demand graphs, the exact opposite happens.
Take a the high-end income labor market, for example, and say taxes are increased on those laborers earning high-income. This in turns increases their costs, and because of this, shifts their supply curve back. In response there are less high-end laborers, with even higher incomes. The point of more taxes on the rich is to create more less-income laborers.
Oddly enough, the same things happens with low-income laborers. If taxes are decreased on low-income laborers, this means less costs, which means their supply curve shifts outward. Because of this, the equilibrium price causes more poorer laborers.
Thoughts on this?
Hi. Does anyone think the opening should define economics as the study of resource allocation instead of production and consumption? After all, not all of the problems studied by economics directly involve produciton and consumption. It's usually defined that way. Does anyone think that's POV? Mgw 23:42, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Hi, I am working to encourage implementation of the goals of the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. Part of that is to make sure articles cite their sources. This is particularly important for featured articles, since they are a prominent part of Wikipedia. The Fact and Reference Check Project has more information. Thank you, and please leave me a message when you have added a few references to the article. - Taxman 19:20, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
Can anyone clarify for me what is meant by the phrase "through measurable variables" in the first sentence of the article? - Nat Kraus e 10:21, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Seems like a euphemism for socialism.
It was wrong. And I think the greek spelling is still wrong, but I don't have a dictionary with me. -- pippo2001 09:54, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I've been slowly working on Category:Economics and am hoping that anyone who watches this page might be able to help. The main category has more than 150 articles and many should be sorted into subcategories. I don't know much about the subject. Maurreen 23:44, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I reverted the edit made by 82.32.64.213 on June 19th to last version by Muijzo. That user then reverted the edit that I made. The only thing I agree with his change is the term "ceteris paribus". UH Collegian 17:13, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Yes clearly it's not all things equal because when using ceteris paribus, the point is to discuss a change in one thing holding the rest equal. That change means not all things are equal. So your university is at odds not only with how it is used everywhere else, but when it comes down to it, common sense too. Also at issue here, is reverting a change instead of just discussing it. When will people reallize that reverting changes that are made in good faith only leads to resentment and revert wars? Unless an edit is vandalism or is actively negative for an article, just discuss on the talk page why you disagree with the edits. If there is no response, then revert or adjust. Clearly that would have been better in this case since, UH Collegian, you started out saying "The only thing I agree with.." then moved to "The only thing I did not agree with..." then after reading the user's rational you agreed with the changes. The hard feelings (which could have gotten much worse) could have been easily avoided by the method I just outlined. Finally, to the anon, while you don't have to register, it does make keeping consistent conversations with you much easier, and you'll find people will automatically have a higher level of respect for your edits. - Taxman Talk 15:10, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)
The greek word oikos is spelled actually "οίκος", and "νέμω" is an archaic verb, meaning literally "to distribute", although it later received also the meaning of "rules" ("law" is a better translation to "νόμος", as "rule" is "κανόνας"). "to distribute" is actually more accurate to the meaning of economia. I can assure that, since my native language is Greek. Please edit this page; the server seems to be down at this moment.
There is a new portal. See Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Business, Economics, Finance. Maurreen 03:39, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
Someone recently moved the link to Tutor2u up near the top of the list. I'd never looked at it before, so I followed it, and basically got a splash page of ads, with content down the right margin. Should we link this at all? If so, does it really belong near the top of the list? I think not. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:36, July 21, 2005 (UTC)
The article
subsidy is currently nominated to be improved on
Wikipedia:This week's improvement drive. If you want to support the article, you can vote for it there.--
Fenice
17:50, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
You might also be interested in
Grameen Bank, an institution involved in microcredit loans in the third world. Vote for
Grameen Bank on
WP:IDRIVE.--
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06:27, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
I think Economics would benefit from having a List of legal topics type list. I was talking to MyDogAteGodsHat too, does anyone know if there is a similiar topic for economics, and if there is a redirect to it from List of economic topics would be useful. -- ShaunMacPherson 06:45, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
This sentence is just plain wrong: "One way economists deal with this is to qualify discussions of economic choice by noting the qualifier ceteris paribus ("all other things held constant...") referring to moral or social factors that are (for the sake of argument) held equivalent for all choices that one might make."
The ceteris paribus assumption has nothing to do with ethics but is rather the simple recognition of the fact that at any particular time a given phenomenon is subject to multiple influences and in order to understand any of these we must consider them one at a time - all other things being equal. The way economists usually deal with ethical issues is by distinguishing between Positive (is) and Normative (ought) economic statements (which said distinction should be mentioned somewhere in the article, perhaps along with social welfare functions and the like). radek
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)
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)
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. BobW 67.103.183.204 23:05, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
header anonymously added without content User:61.246.156.234 6 Nov 2005
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.
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)
would you like to publish this article? -- Zondor 22:16, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Following changed to a redirect.
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
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.
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)
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
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)
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.
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)
I think there's a good case for adopting the JEL classification system [5] 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)
A good question. I'll see what I can find out JQ 02:29, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
What about; Conversely, economics is said to be positive when it tries to predict objectively. -- ∞ Dbroadwell 07:31, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
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)
Actually a more accurate statement would be that pretty much all economics except those based on labor theory of value deal with scarcity. The Austrians are definetly not neoclassical (whatever that is) and their theories are based on the idea of scarcity. Same for heterodox approaches to general equilibrium. The institutionalists sort of pick and choose. radek 03:21, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Would someone care to clean up Pat Devine and his socialist economics? Simesa 01:09, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
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.
It's not. Whoever wrote that has no idea of what they're talking about. I deleted the 'examples' as they're all pretty bad.
radek
23:05, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
"Why is it Goofy?" Taking them in turn: Pareto efficiency - this isn't a fallacy. You might not like the concept but it's not a fallacy. See logical fallacy Marginalism - again not a fallacy. First part of the criticism was okay though. Second sentence didn't make any sense. Lump of labour - yes this is a fallacy. But it's not a fallacy committed by economics or economists. It's a fallacy which results from LACK of knowledge of economics. See my comment above. Behavioral economics - It' still economics. Explores a particular area but it's still economics. It doesn't imply that non behavioral economics is a fallacy. Just tweaks some of the assumptions. Even then, Kahnemman himself said that 'mainstream economics applies in 90% of the situations. Behavioral economics is about the 10% when it doesn't. You want a criticism section, fine. But it's got to be much better than the crap that is there now.
I rewrote the section and deleted a small portion of it (particularly the lump of labor fallacy, which does not belong here at all). I'm fine with pointing out that there are disagreements and various theories and much internal as well as external criticism. But seriously Page, the part was just badly written and confusing, and well, wrong both by implication and outright. radek 02:48, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
I have removed:
Feel free to object. -- A Sunshade Lust 05:35, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Just a question. Is not the science more about the movement of money, either world wide or within a particular area? Of course there may well be many different approaches and economic phylosophies, but I suggest these are simply different ways of looking at the subject rather than the subject itself. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lleighton ( talk • contribs) 30 May 2006.
hi! I'm an editor on LostPedia, a Lost (TV series)-related wiki (and recently, an editor on wiki as well. this stuff is addictive!). i'm working on an economics article (IANAEconomist) over there with someone who is an economist; i'm acting more in the editing capacity, whilst the other user is supplying the facts, essentially. i'd really love some other wikipedians who are versed in this area (who are also good editors) to have a look at the article in question! my aim is to make the article a lot more understandable to people unfamiliar with economics as a science. it has the potential to be a truly excellent article if it can be distilled a bit more. your input is appreciated! -- Kaini 04:07, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
"The accounting measures usually used measure the pay received for work and the price paid for goods, and do not deal with the economic activities of those not significantly involved in buying and selling (for example, retired people, beggars, peasants)."
This could be a lot clearer, I think.-- 142.227.45.20 03:09, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
This article has really degenerated in quality over the last 6 months. As it stands now it is difficult to read, makes incorrect statements and does not adequately represent or even discuss well what "economics" is. As the artcile stands today, it is indicative of some of the problems that Wikipedia faces is producing output that is of high quality. I am, of couse, not the first nor the last to make these observations.
== I have to agree with the above - this article is also full of jargon. Can someone with a better understanding of economics please pull out the salient points and somehow move the rest into sub articles or whatever. For soemone who had no understanding of the topic at all, though I have some myself, this reads like anally retentive l337 sp33k.
Please excuse the intrusion, but how about just reverting the article to a past version with all of the drivel removed.. Seems like a good idea to me. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.17.118.55 ( talk • contribs) 8 July 2006.
Unlike natural scientists and in a way similar to what happen in other social sciences, economists are generally unable to test their theories due to its impracticality. Unlike the natural sciences, economics yields no natural laws or universal constants, so this has led some critics to argue that economics is not a science, or at best, is just a soft science. This is plain false. The Austrian School deduces the whole economics from just some axioms and empirical notions, these are nothing but universal constants for the world one lives in. Intangible 06:04, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
"Economics has been persistently criticized for its heavy reliance on unrealistic, unobservable, or unverifiable assumptions. Some people reply to this criticism by saying that the unrealistic assumptions of economics result from abstraction from unimportant details, and abstraction is necessary for knowledge of a complex real world. So, far from unrealistic assumptions detracting from the epistemic worth of economics, such assumptions are essential for economic knowledge. Denominating this explanation the abstractionist defence, and after clarifying abstraction, unrealistic assumptions and kindred notions, some studies have shown that this abstractionist defence does not successfully rebut the position of those who criticize economics for its unrealistic assumptions."
I have a lot of problems with the quoted material. First, it is copied nearly word for word from its source (although the source is cited). Second, most of the changes made to the text are to reword from first to third person. Examples; "I call this line of argument 'the Abstractionist Defense'." has been changed to "Denominating this explanation the abstractionist defence", making it seem as though the 'abstractionist defense' is a regularly used term. Also, "I show that the Abstractionist Defense does not successfully rebut the position" has been changed to "some studies have shown that this abstractionist defence does not successfully rebut". Making it appear as though there are multiple studies proving this, rather than just one person arguing it. Third, this is the abstract of one paper. Simple because one paper criticizes something does not justify it being included in an encyclopedia article. For these reasons I am removing the text from the article. William conway bcc 17:33, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
The following paragraph was poorly written and lacks citation. I am sure something like this belongs in the article; it should have citation. I would have copy edited it myself it I'd been sure of what it meant to say. And, yes, it began with a lowercase letter.
in modern times, alternative measures have been development to measure the welfare of a nation, flaws have been seen in modern toolds such as Gross domestic product, the index of social economic welfare (IESW) is published by the UN and show economic welfare more accurate as it factors in enviromental costs, it subtracts the cost to remove negatives to show how a society grows rather than measure GDP which is simply an measurement of all transactions.
I would even try to pick apart the syntax and grammar; I think there are supposed to be several sentences here. I'm guessing "have been development" ==> "have been developed", "toolds" might be "tools" (but that's not a very apt word, either). Someone want to take a shot at rewriting this in actual English? - Jmabel | Talk 06:40, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
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I'm a little concerned that Economics as a formal branch of mathematics is totally ignored here in favor of the social science, which came after the mathematical models. I'm also not sure it makes sense to call "scarcity" the fundamental concept underlying economics; I might have chosen rationality, comparability of values, or efficiency. No mention at all of important concepts like Pareto optimality, revealed preference, marginal utility? I'm just a dabbler, but surely there's someone here with a better background in mathematical economics that could do a reasonable job fixing this? -- LDC
Dated June 15, 2002 by User:Gretchen
You are quite right - there is a mathematical side of economics (or as one of my professors would say hardcore econometrics). I could write up about 30-40 pages and subpages on the subject. It will take up some time though, and the real problem is to stick to the theoretical side and not to engage oneself into discussions about which view is right or wrong - we would clearly miss the point here. Anyway, you are the first person that has borught this up and I'm grateful for that. WP
Someone wrote a bad review of economics section at kuro5hin:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2001/9/24/43858/2479/4#4
This comment could help the section to improve?
Dated September 12, 2003 by User:142.177.79.81
I put in a brief section on econometrics and added a little to the network effects section. Could add more, and may do so later. No guarantee it's totally precise and correct, but if I could do that off the top of my head, I'd probably be writing a textbook rather than updating Wiki b/c I felt like it ...
Some topics I think would be worthwhile (off the top of my head):
Game theory (linking to John Nash etc), pareto optimality, exchange rate theory (pegged, float, dirty-float), Bretton Woods, Neo-Keynesian school, Milton Friedman, the Austrian School, utility theory, revealed preference, cardinality and ordinality, simple supply and demand, oligopoloy / monopoly theory and competition, contestability, sunk costs, interest rates, money supply, the concept of a market, Walras and the concept of the auction, the business cycle, random walks, determinism and predictablity in economics (linking to chaos theory), financial markets, and theories of regulation and taxation.
Off the top of my head though - I might come back to do some of them if I've got the time. Haven't really thought about most of this stuff for a few years now ...
C
Dated: February 25, 2002 apparently by User:Conversion script
Yikes, I agree, those are all important. But let's get to neutral on the structure first. I think the Fundamentals and History section are better up front because they simply don't take sides or introduce 'capitalism vs. not' - actually they frame the idea of political economy almost perfectly, and show how animal (instinctual swaps) to hunter-gatherer to more complex trade build up... a very even beginning, but kind of out of place at the very very end - 24
That said, many people will come here wanting to do a crash course in Economics 101 and so political economy, fundamentals, foundations, etc., should be nothing but links up front for them... hard to know how to handle this.
On the other hand, some university-educated former peasant in Cambodia with 5000 words of English will come here wanting to know why "Economics" is destroying his village and country, and that market has less support from neutral sources.
I'd say, err heavily on the side of neutrality, since that improves articles and gives something that can't be provided elsewhere - a neutral point of view. Fundamentals would go first, mention the concerns of the non-capitalist schools, end with the concept of political economy, link off to capitalism, and then proceed to explain how that political economy's terms are applied in the present: the rest of the article. Is that fair enough?
Dated April 5, 2002 by User:24.150.61.63
My vote would be for keeping this article fairly short, and essentially just saying: here are all the articles we have on economics here in Wikipedia, with brief uncontroversial explanations. More controversial ideas, like, say, Marx vs Neoclassical, should go in the respective articles so that it is very clear who is saying what. Dated April 5, 2002 by User:Enchanter
If anything, I think the article could be slimmed down with, for example, some of the history stuff going in history of economic thought. Dated April 5, 2002 by
User:Enchanter
Rewrite improves it significantly, one nitpick: there is not enough focus on the thing economics is actually about - the formation, administration and optimization of *markets*, e.g. commodity markets. Mostly a matter of language, but all these players and studies are clustered around things, and those things are markets.
Another minor nitpick is that the Fundamentals section used to nicely bridge between the idea that economics is about the human ability to choose and trade, whereas the exactly same allocation of resources in other animals is guided mostly by instinct and is studied in biology and ecology. In the old wording, that bridged neatly to the hunter-gatherer society stuff. In the new one, it's a bit harder to tell how anyone could believe that hunter-gatherer society can be irrelevant if animal behavior and ecology are relevant... where is the bridge? This whole matter may need a rewrite to make the extreme views clear - I presume Margulis' flat statement that economics is ecology for humans is one such extreme. Is there another extreme saying that economics is the pinnacle of human activity coming directly from god, contrary in all ways to our animal nature, or whatever? Seems to me I've seen quotes like that...
Dated April 8, 2002 by User:24.150.61.63
Replaced scarcity, not because it isn't in the textbooks, but because "choices under scarcity" is just a verbose defintition of "trade". I vote for clarity.
"capitalism" doesn't belong on front page, i agree. Dated April 8, 2002 by User:142.150.129.50
Dated April 8, 2002 by User:24.150.61.63
-speculation: in twenty years, economics will be incorporated as a branch of general systems theory. (doesn't belong on front page either) Dated April 8, 2002 by User:142.150.129.50
Dated April 8, 2002 by User:24.150.61.63
MLP-Volt Dated April 8, 2002 by User:142.150.129.50
ALL of the above could use more citation and qualification, as it is very hard to write a totally neutral text that doesn't take sides on issues of state or values. And whose terms the classical, neoclassical, Marxist and green gurus would at least all recognize and not hack up. Which must be our objective, if we wish wiki to have the most citable and most trusted text on the subject anywhere in the world.
And if that's not what we want, why the hell are we here?
--- Anyway if you truly don't give a shit, thanks for your input so far. ;-) - 24
Dated April 8, 2002 by User:24.150.61.63
I'm a little concerned that Economics as a formal branch of mathematics is totally ignored here in favor of the social science, which came after the mathematical models. I'm also not sure it makes sense to call "scarcity" the fundamental concept underlying economics; I might have chosen rationality, comparability of values, or efficiency. No mention at all of important concepts like Pareto optimality, revealed preference, marginal utility? I'm just a dabbler, but surely there's someone here with a better background in mathematical economics that could do a reasonable job fixing this? -- LDC
Dated June 15, 2002 by User:Gretchen
Why not the allocation of resources, period? Whether they're 'scarce' or not isn't really relevant and too often a matter of opinion. There are plenty of doctors in the US, for example, but their distribution is hardly optimal. It's economic, however.
Dated July 29, 2003 by User:Socrates99
The first sentence has no verb: "Economics (formally known as political economy) the governance of the production, distribution and consumption of wealth and the various related problems of scarcity, finance, debt, taxation, labor, law, inequity, poverty, pollution, war, etc. " ...I am going to insert the word studies for now. Feel free to fix it differently. Kingturtle 04:54, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Someone wrote a bad review of economics section at kuro5hin:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2001/9/24/43858/2479/4#4
This comment could help the section to improve? joao
Dated September 12, 2003 by User:142.177.79.81
"Economists are sometimes referred to as Methodological Individualists."
Hmmm... It sounds like you're saying that the two terms are synonyms, which is certainly not the case. Are you saying that all economists are MIs? Or that some people say that all economists are MIs? From the 5 minutes of Googling on the subject, I don't see why economists should necessarily be MIs. Axlrosen 23:54, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Dated December 11, 2003 by User:142.177.109.130
The article as it stands in December 2003 is now balanced by "framing economics", an introduction that lays out the reasons why economic models do not fully explain human behavior (failing to deal with ethics, ecology and energy economics, how labour and welfare are actually produced, etc.) This could be abbreviated and some of it moved as criticism to Homo economicus. However, these qualifying statements need to be made, and stronger qualifying statements can be found at http://natcap.org - somewhere in there you can find a list of "the 15 bad assumptions made by economics itself."
The question of political economy as questioning the assumptions versus economics as putting them into models is also dealt with in that section.
Unfortunately, after the "framing economics" section, the "economics is real" view kind of takes over. It's telling that there is no article on Socialist economics or even labour economics, welfare economics. There's some on feminist economics and some on Marxist economics at Marxism, but, all told, these subjects are not taken seriously enough.
It would be good to see them treated as carefully as energy economics, green economics and human development theory are. Even if most of what is in these older theories ( ecological economics, feminist economics, labour economics, welfare economics, and Karl himself) is now subsumed into the more recent theories, they remain of historical interest. David Ricardo is broadly considered the founder of labour economics... and very recent figures like Amartya Sen associate themselves with welfare economics. So you cannot have good coverage of economics without at least explaining what these theories are and how they settled the social/economic and ethical/economic questions.
Law and economics should also be mentioned as a way to apply economic models to law. It may be that these methods do not describe choice in the real world at all, but only in artifical/industrial/legal worlds created by humanity.
Dated December 11, 2003 by User:142.177.109.130
Dated December 16, 2003 by User:142.177.75.45
Removed:
I agree sorta with the premis, and there has been a controversy over applying economics to various decisions. On the other hand this is not balanced as written, and I am not sure what a supply and demand question is. I personally think that controversy over economics should not go as part of the initial summary, but should instead go into a seperate section on the page if such is considered necessary. Jrincayc 21:57, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Dated December 16, 2003 by User:142.177.75.45
was replaced with:
The first actually makes sense to me. Is there any advantage to the second? It looks like it might be more precise, but it doesn't make much sense to me. Jrincayc 14:24, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)
The original wording is both weaker and less precise. First Marxists don't "feel", their theory states clearly. Second, the original wording does not say why Marxist economics says as it does. Yes the terms are used in the particular marxist sense, which is why their are quotes aroud them.
No more than one can explain Smith without explaining supply and demand in context. Some words are primary. For marx, dialectical struggle over the means of production is, almost, as close to an axiom as one will get. Perhaps you could find someone more sympathetic to marxism than I am to find a simple way of explaining the theory. Absent this we should, at least, let Marx speak for himself.
This quote from the Marxism page says very much the same thing as my earlier revision:
"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. "
All I've done is paraphrase this rather famous 'graf.
Stirling Newberry 03:22, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)
One word I have been banishing from economics pages is "modern". It's kind of ridiculous, in most countries you have a Marxist, Keynesian, monetarist and perhaps other analyses battling it out in the political sphere. Considering that economics is a SOCIAL science and not a real science, it seems to me the idea that say Milton Friedman's ideas are "modern" and Keynes (and his followers like Paul Krugman) and Marx (and his followers like the Monthly Review) are old-hat, classical, outdated and so forth seems to be slightly POV. Post-Galileo, most people will agree to a consensus on real sciences like astronomy, but a social science like economics will always be fraught with different camps as long as economic classes exist, and implying that economics is more like a science (once they dropped the word political from political economy and added the -ics), and that the ideas of Milton Friedman financed by the idle classes are "modern", and that Keynesian or Marxian ideas supported by many workers are outdated in some manner doesn't seem to fit. -- Lancemurdoch 04:19, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)
There is a clear dividing line between economics in the 19th century, which based its practice in description, and the modern view which takes economics to be mathematically based - which is not to say scientific or not. This difference is primary, and not based on monetarism versus Keynesian theory. The basis of economics as the choice between scarce outcomes is something which no school of market economics seriously disputes. Now what, exactly, is scarce, and what the fundamental scarcities are, is open to enormous dispute, but "a form" is both vague and does not correctly capture that the overwhelming consensus among practicing economists is for the definition offered, which, literally, heads just about every text book on economics currently published.
This differs strongly from the 19th century defintions of political economy, which treated the subject as based in description of human activity - even if the ultimate subject of choices between mutually exclusive outcomes was the central question of the work.
I am all in favor of not piling on wasted adjectives which only serve to advance one particular view over others, but here, the word modern is used in its absolutely proper sense as the current tradition and theory of a discipline, and not being attached to a particular school, though I did note in the definition that it was modern market economics - that is all schools of economics centered on the operation of markets.
changing it back, there was no NPOV violation here.
Stirling Newberry 06:07, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)
____
If other people are happy with it I am.
Stirling Newberry 06:55, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)
We really need an equation editor. This subject needs to have at least the simple equations laid out.
Some topics I think would be worthwhile (off the top of my head):
Game theory (linking to John Nash etc), pareto optimality, exchange rate theory (pegged, float, dirty-float), Bretton Woods, Neo-Keynesian school, Milton Friedman, the Austrian School, utility theory, revealed preference, cardinality and ordinality, simple supply and demand, oligopoly / monopoly theory and competition, contestability, sunk costs, interest rates, money supply, the concept of a market, Walras and the concept of the auction, the business cycle, random walks, determinism and predictablity in economics (linking to chaos theory), financial markets, and theories of regulation and taxation.
Off the top of my head though - I might come back to do some of them if I've got the time. Haven't really thought about most of this stuff for a few years now ...
C
Replaced scarcity, not because it isn't in the textbooks, but because "choices under scarcity" is just a verbose defintition of "trade". I vote for clarity.
The first sentence has no verb: "Economics (formally known as political economy) the governance of the production, distribution and consumption of wealth and the various related problems of scarcity, finance, debt, taxation, labor, law, inequity, poverty, pollution, war, etc. " ...I am going to insert the word studies for now. Feel free to fix it differently. Kingturtle 04:54, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Removed:
I agree sorta with the premis, and there has been a controversy over applying economics to various decisions. On the other hand this is not balanced as written, and I am not sure what a supply and demand question is. I personally think that controversy over economics should not go as part of the initial summary, but should instead go into a seperate section on the page if such is considered necessary. Jrincayc 21:57, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Dealing with the impact of energy on economics is certainly worth treatment, but then, this is an area where I have some degree of expertise. Wiki's not paper, we can cover the emerging ideas in xaos theory and scarcity which a more staid publication could not. I'd like to open a discussion on how to do this, without distracting from the presentation of the status quo, which, after all, is what people go to an encyclopedia for.
Stirling Newberry 23:04, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Economic Theory As A Degenerate Science
Steve Keen a senior lecturer in economics in the University of Western Sydney claims in his book "debunking economics" that current mainstream economic theory is a degenerate science closer to the field of astrology than the field of astronomy. Keen argues that the very mathematical foundation of economics is flawed. While the theory of supply and demand is correct, the mathematics is used incorrectly in the basic foundation of economics.
In particular, the supply and demand graphs shows two straight lines intersecting each other. The point where the straight upward slooping supply line intersect the downward slooping demand line is where the economic exchange is suppose to take place.
The problem as immediately spotted by physicists, mathematicians and engineers is that in real life, lines representing natural phenomena is never a straight line but curves.
Keen says, the market demand curve can’t be smooth – at best it’s jagged, going up and down with price – while the supply "curve" is at best a horizontal line which probably slopes down rather than up.
(This guy Keen is a quack. He is claiming that firms will want to produce more product when price (and profits) goes down and they will want to produce less when selling price (and profits) goes up! He also claims the demand curve rises in places. For this to happen the income effect would have to be greater than the substitution effect and there is very little empirical evidence to support this (see here for an explanation). What actually happens is that the demand curve falls at varying rates (see here). mydogategodshat 11:25, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC) )
If the supply and demand graphs are calculated properly with actual curved supply and demand lines, then an amazing solution may occur. The supply curve may intersect the demand curve at multiple points. That is to say that there may be multiple solutions or points of stability (known as attractors).
Conscious that he might be dismissed as a ranting marginalised lunatic, Keen says his arguments are not based on ideologies, but on mathematics.
Keen says, most introductory economics textbooks present a sanitised, uncritical rendition of conventional economic theory, and the courses in which these textbooks are used do little to counter this mendacious presentation. Students might learn that "externalities" reduce the efficiency of the market mechanism but they will not learn that the "proof" that markets are efficient is itself flawed.
The minority which continues on to further academic training is taught the complicated techniques of economic analysis, with little to no discussions of whether these techniques are actually intellectually valid. The enormous critical literature is simply left out of advanced courses while glaring logical shortcomings are glossed over with specious assumptions. However, most students accept these assumptions because their training leaves them both insufficiently literate and insufficiently numerate.
Equilibrium, he says, has become a religion – anything which is non market is not as good as anything which is market, therefore every move we make towards market will make us better, so it’s an ideology not a reality.
The reality is that the market doesn’t work in equilibrium and that’s the thing that economists can’t comprehend. They are stuck in a 19th century mathematical world, where everything works in equilibrium and they can’t cope with anything other than that.
The main problem I have with this material is that it is not a critique of economics. It is a critque of the simplifing assumptions used in first year economics to make difficult concepts easier for new students to understand. It is true that in first year economics curves are linear, there is no mention of multiple equilibria, all supply curves slope upwards to the right, and there are many assumptions made that are not critically assessed. But when you go beyond first year, these simplifying assumptions are relaxed. Demand curves have price points. It is possible to have a downward sloping to the right supply curve, but only in very resticted situations (only industry supply curves, not individual; only in the long run, not in the short run; and only when the long run average cost curve is decining over all relevent output levels). There are instances of multiple equilibria (labour markets and foriegn trade markets).
This article needs a "Criticisms" section, but this is not it. mydogategodshat 21:22, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The one valuable point made by this contributor is that economist generally do not adequately assess the fundamental assumptions upon which models are built. mydogategodshat 21:34, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Thank you, Mydogate, for putting this in talk. Wikipedia managed to become very slow for me right before I had to leave for work. I think Steve Keen has some points, but I think he is exaggerating when he states that economics as a whole is degenerate. I don't think that the critque should go on the front economics section, but I think either an article on Steve Keen, or on problems with typical economic assumptions would be fine to create as a separate article. Jrincayc 03:06, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Added "Critics" to the "Also See" section. Added Steve_Keen as a link to a separate wiki page. - drnobody
---
Quotes from above: "Replaced scarcity, not because it isn't in the textbooks, but because "choices under scarcity" is just a verbose defintition of "trade". I vote for clarity. "
"I think the point of economics is to create those verbose definitions. It's not just "choice under scarcity" but also the NATURE of choice, the NATURE of scarcity. The Fundamentals section is good but has to make this clearer, and come up front. "
Quote 1 is incorrect, choice has little to do with trade and everything to do with scarcity. Choice occurs directly because of scarcity, since if I had everything i wanted (no scarcity) then I would no longer need to *choose* between alternatives. To go further, choice is usually considered a 1 person exercise while trade is at least 2, or more.
I glaced over the article and I see that a lot of stuff in political economy isn't included in here and could, and should, be moved over. -- ShaunMacPherson 13:00, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
--- A quote: "Economics explicitly does not deal with free abundant inputs -"
I am not sure if this sentence is correct, but at the very least the term 'abundant' is incorrect. The opposite of scarce (finite) is not 'abundant' but closer to limitless / infinite.
As for free, economics looks at free inputs all the time, sun, air are usually considered 'free' for the taking. As well as pure public goods are necessarily 'free goods', usually paid for by tax however, because no market can exist for a pure public good (i.e. national defense).
I have removed the following:
[edit]Economics is a social science that studies human resource making activity. Humans make resources to support their life. Human life on this Earth needs supply. The three basic supply, food, clothing and housing then a wide variety other goods, products and services. The supply, these resources is made in the economy of a society. Economics studies how the economy works. How the products, goods and serives are made, traded and distributed.
Maybe this was written by a non-english writer, but I have to challenge some of the terminology. Generally in economics, resources are things that are used rather than made. Also to say that economics studies how things are made is misleading. The study of how things are made is industrial engineering. Economics studies how things are made only in the very restricted sense of how scarce resources are allocated in a production process. I do however agree tautologically that "economics studies how the economy works". :)
I could as well just edit it, but I'd guess editing wars are frowned upon. So I'm new around here, and, as a non-logged in user, I made some minor changes to the article, most notably in the definitions of microeconomics and macroeconomics. The phrase "which constructs economic phenomena from the behavior of individual actors and firms" was changed to "which constructs economic behavior from the behavior of individual actors and firms" - which makes no sense.
Previously, the page said something about "microeconomics studying the behavior of individual actors", which would rule general equilibrium theory out.
I'm thinking of "Microeconomics builds a theory of economics phenomena starting from its microfoundations - the behaviour of individual families and firms". Somehow, it seems the word "phenomena" is frowned upon, but it's really precisely what I mean here - see phenomenology.
If the talk pages don't show any activity on this in a few hours, I'll edit it again. The old version was imprecise, and the version which replaced mine makes no sense.
I am a "newbie" so you can take what I have to say with however much salt you care to.
I was startled, first of all, to find that the word "capitalism" is nowhere actually mentioned in the body of Wikipedia's Economy citation (except in the reference list at the bottom). Capitalism seems instead to have the status of a subcategory in the Business citation. Marxist, Marxism, Marxian, Karl Marx, on the other hand /are/ cited, some more than once. Whatever happened to good old capitalism guys?
Stirling Newberry Most of the article is a discussion of capitalist economics - starting with Smith, Ricardo, moving through Marshall and Keynes, with some references to later work. However it is worth pointing out the difference between market and capitalism - the two are not the same, and emphasizing that economics is focused primarily on capitalist markets, and to a lesser extent socialist ones.
The authors seem to have carried NPOV to a new and near pathological extreme, as though in an article on psychotherapy, Freud had been banished to the Medicine category and the text was chock full of Jungian philosophy.
Stirling Newberry I think this statement is a bit extreme and insulting.
Your article seems more of a battleground than a source of information on Economics aimed at someone that actually wants to know how it is practised in the world as we know it. Last I looked capitalism was /the/ major economic system on the planet and the End of History was nigh. No problem with discussing its shortcomings but shouldn't one at least mention it?
Stirling Newberry And this one definitely is. The article goes into great detail about the primary activity of economists - making models, collecting data and using supply and demand curves with measurable variables to understand collective behavior.
Wgoetsch 22Mar04
2 April 2004
In our country we haven't had luck to have Ludwig von Mises or any other "Austrian Economist", who would understand topics that no one can understand without embracing "Economic Subjectivism" (see my refutation of its refutation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Economic_subjectivism ) instead of "Economic Objectivism", and we experienced the hyperinflation similar to the German's hyperinflation in 1920's before the collapse of Communism in our country.
After that our economists have been luckily smart enough and didn't accept Monetarism (that was suggested by USA economists) which destroyed some Latino-American economies.
Here is something about "Austrian Economics" that I propose to be inserted after the paragraph on Marxism in the chapter Development of economic thought:
British " objective-cost theory of value" conceptualization inadvertedly led to the "double valuedness" of any object. Any product had two kinds of values at the same time (bread, for example, though higher in " use value" than diamonds, was somehow lower in " exchange value").
This very concept of 'double valuedness' enabled Marx to conceptualize market economy as internally contradictive economic system, a system badly misdirecting resources into " production for profit" (by exploatating the very difference between the " exchange value" and " use value") instead of directing resources (which then communist states did by central planning or by self-managed arrangements in communist Yugoslavia) for " production for use".
As can be seen, British economists' " objective-cost theory of value" conceptualization led to rise of the theory of capitalist exploitation of both natural resources and working class, while they did not deal with the same topics as Marx at all, such as money, capital or business cycles, there were at the same time Austrian economics (founded by Carl Menger who wrote his "Principles of Economics" at roughly the same time as Marx did his "Kapital"), which were first to clash directly with "double valuedess" approach.
Hyperinflation (which later destroyed German economy and made dissapointed German people quite eager to accept Adolf Hitler as their rescuer) was spared the Austrian country mainly due to this Austrian economics approach in 1920s led by Ludwig von Mises, who rejected "double valuedness".
With annexation of Austria by Germany and Nazi terror Ludwig von Mises emigrated to the United States. There, however, at a time when every communist and social democratic exile from Europe was given a high academic post, the leading Austrian economist Mises was refused such a job, even more, the dean of New York University's Graduate School of Business, Sawhill, has lobbied good students not to take Mises's 'right-wing, reactionary' classes. Neither Mises lived to see the fellow Austrain economist Friedrich Hayek wining the Nobel prize in 1974.
Even in US it seems the "Austrian Economics" didn't get the deserved space (See: http://www.gmu.edu/departments/ihs/hsr/s97hsr.html#austrianstates ) and is still a "missing link" even in Wikipedia's Development of economic thought.
A reader from a Post-Communist country P.S. I'd like to appologize for my English. My writing in English language is not very good. I understand it very well, though.
Stirling Newberry All I can say is "are you joking?" the economics sections of Wikipedia lean very heavily towards the Austrian school, much more so than practicing economicsts. There is ample coverage - in some cases more than ample coverage - of Austrian concepts, links to mises and other liberatarian/austrian/"classical liberal" sites. The mainstream of economics is focused on mathematical modelling based on collection of data. The Austrian school is certainly part of the overall economic dialog and is referenced. If someone has specific concepts which are important that need to be included, by all means do so.
A Reader from a Post-Communist Country 11 Avg 2004
There is clear enough distinction between all the economics sections of Wikipedia and the particular section, the 4th Chapter - Development of economic thought section! Or it is not?? Only this particular section was what I have commented.
And, I must ask you, if this particular section is leaning heavily towards the Austrian school, as Stiling Newberry is trying to convince me (it is I, who should ask him his "are you joking?" question), why he doesn't say something about the actual leaning of this - remember - particular section towards a particular School of Thought, namely the School that inspired the economic experiments that have put many Central European (as well East German) countries that were once parts of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and before WW II economically not so behind their neighbouring countries, now in year 2004 in a position where Old Europe is afraid of our workers seeking better economic conditions elsewhere because of consequences of this economic experiments.
Any statistical analysis of the text (for example the ratio between the number of words that are used in paragraphs that talk about the particular School that you academics in the capitalist countries who yourself never had to live its experiments, love to write about in this particular section, and the number of words about Austrian Economics in this particular section) can be used to show it. In the following paragraph I have counted 129 words!:
Then there is another 78 words added at the end of another paragraph that IMHO should only say something about whether economics can be applied to all forms of society or not, without any particular School's opinion... however there is added an opinion of one School only. It is I, again, who should state "I find this bias a little puzzling myself" statement, not CSTAR (or Newberry or any of you - academics in the capitalist countries - who, let me repeat, never had to live its experiments! And who never were forced to seek better economic conditions after the fall of some Utopic ideas of some School.)
And the closest to the mere mentioning of existence of the Austrian School (actually it mentions only general approach of supply-side, nothing more) is the following statement:
As if there wouldn't be enough distasteful, we have to read yet more opinions held by Utopians in the same section again.
yours truly, A Reader from a Post-Communist Country P.S. I recommand you academics from Not-Post-Communist-Countries that you come live experiments of the Schools you lean to and then seek better economic conditions in your neighbouring countries, if they would want you at all. 11 Aug 2004
Economists believe that incentives and preferences (tastes) together play an important role in shaping decision making. Sometimes a preference relation can be represented by a utility function. Concepts from the Utilitarian school of philosophy are used as analytical concepts within economics, though economists appreciate that society may not adopt utilitarian objectives.
Could we get rid of Economists believe-- This reminds me of a church. Shouldn't this be something like:
From the distinctive point of view of economic analysis incentives and preferences (tastes) together play an important role in decision making.
Also what meaning does the word "shaping" convey in the original version of the article? Wouldn't it be more informative to refer to a process of decision making (this I admit is idiosyntractic -- I believe in a process view human activity). CSTAR 16:52, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
Economists doesn't believe.... They postulate that incentives and preferences etc. -- 212.45.33.21 17:04, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I have just created a book on Economics from a mathematical perspective. It has no content yet and help would be greatly appreciated, http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Economics:_A_Mathematical_Aproach.
I need to reference an article or section that is not present, one that explains the means by which costs are externalized and the effects of this. Examples could be the externalization of health costs by the coal industry or the externalization of costs of defending, suppressing, and replacing countries and governments to ensure cheap motor fuels in the US. I could write something about this but it would not be from the viewpoint of an economics expert. Please notify me when this is available so that I can link to it. Thanks, Leonard G. 21:57, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)
But isn't this picture at the top completely misleading? Or am I just being too picky? CSTAR 01:24, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
For about 34 minutes, someone replaced the beginning of the article with this:
Some of that material may be valuable to work in. Much of it seems to be ripped from somewhere (The click here note gives a clue towards that). Also the warning at the end of major changes seems to be ignorant, purposely or not, of the collaborative editing process we have here. I thought the matrial was, at a minimum, worth discussion. - Taxman 15:09, Jul 16, 2004 (UTC)
Tout le monde loue - pour leurs qualités pédagogiques, leur accessibilité et leur absence de formalisme - les ouvrages sur les "principes de l'économie" publiés ces dernières années par des auteurs américains réputés, tels Mankiw et Stiglitz. Couleurs, photos, extraits d'articles de journaux sur des problèmes d'actualité, raisonnements simples et décomposés à l'extrême : le produit est alléchant. Ces ouvrages connaissent des tirages très importants : Mankiw a touché plus de 2 millions de dollars avant même d'avoir écrit une seule ligne...
Everyone hails, by their pedagogical style, accessibility and absence of formalism, works on "Economic Principles, published in recent years by well-known american authors, such as Mankiw and Stigliz. Lots of color, photos, excerpts of journal articles on current day problems, simple and extremely incremental reasoning. These works have large numbers of copies sold; Mankiw has earned 2 million dollars even before writing a line
CSTAR 20:15, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
But it gets a great deal of it wrong - economics, if by this you mean the study of economic behavior - goes back to Plato and Aristotle, who saw it through the tension between individual gain and the necessity for collective defense (see the evolution of the polis in Plato where the "feverish city" falls under attack because it has not ability to unify and defend itself). This viewpoint is the subtext of Wealth of Nations - note the title, the Wealth of Nations - and the importance of a social decision to engage in market behavior, which Smith outlines in Book I, and also in his other work. The name alone "Post Autism Economics" should be a clue that the writers of it are, shall we say, fringy. References mean nothing - every fringe group can site passages which show the evils of the past and where they came from. It's easy. As for "the study of exchange" and the "study of production" - that's the rough and ready distinction between "economics" and "political economy". Political economy assumes that political, collective, decision making manifests itself in measurable ways which alter economic relationships. What I don't see is anything in the passage which hasn't been dealt with in the various wiki articles. What's documentable here? A web site that declares economists and mathematicians are autistic? Replaced with what? A vague sense that people want something different? When the POV has something to document, and a visible sign that it has adherents and a self sustaining discourse, then it's worth documenting.
I'm very sympathetic to challenges to neo-classical economics - being the author of one - but by the same token, we have to have something to document here. If you feel the criticisms of the neo-classical synthesis need to be strengthened with some of the citations, by all means go ahead and do that. That's something that is documentable: POVs that question exchange as the basis. Stirling Newberry 14:06, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I would like to suggest we put the pictures up for a vote - enough people seem to have enough strong feelings about this to make it worth reaching a consensus. Stirling Newberry 16:17, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Suggested have been:
As well as profiles of Ricardo, Marx and Smith.
Any others? Stirling Newberry 16:19, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I would add Keynes, since he basically started macroeconomics. In terms of graphs, I would use a supply and demand graph, since it's simple and ubiquitous and it's the first thing every intro student learns. All the ones at supply and demand are icky and pixellated, though. -- Taak 22:13, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
CSTAR 02:45, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Picture with color
CSTAR 04:43, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Should I replace the supply-demand picture? CSTAR 20:21, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Last try
CSTAR 00:09, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Hello, I think this sentence is incorrect: "There is some degree of tension between economics and ethics, another of the most basic social sciences, which tends to avoid quantification and emphasize balances of rights." Ethics isn't a social science, i.e. it hardly, if at all, conducts experiments or studies empirical findings as a science does. It is a humanity, like philosophy, in that it uses rational arguements to make its case. If it is agreed, then let's change social science to humanity or other equilivant word. -- ShaunMacPherson 06:33, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Someone inserted a query about the phrase "the economy of polities" into the article, wondering if it should read "the economy of politics." I don't know the actual quote, but from context the answer is probably that it's correct as written. I believe "polity" is a political entity such as a state. The use is therefore appropriate. Isomorphic 02:50, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
What's POV about In contrast, most of today's currencies including the US dollar are fiat money meaning it has no intrinsic value?
First the definition of the US dollar as a "fiat currency" is debateable - some say it is, and some say it isn't. Intrinsic value is another notion that is economically debatible, since many economists, do not believe there is any such thing as "intrinsic" value. It is certainly not an assertion to be made in a caption. It's POV - namely gold bug POV. Stirling Newberry 14:40, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Would it be safe to say that most currencies today are not directly pegged to the value of precious metals? -- Taak 04:31, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It would also be safe to assert that most money isn't in the form of coinage. But the point is... What? Is this the most important fact about money? Or more to the point, is it the most important fact about money in relation to the discipline of economics? Or is it something that some people want to point out for their own POV? We've got gold standard, Austrian economics, money, fiat money, paper money, Bretton Woods, supply side economics, Austrian economics macroeconomics -- plenty of places to go into the subject in as much detail as is required for any one. If people feel it is important, add a sentence on monetary basis and the arguments over central banking and legal tender... Stirling Newberry 04:42, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The sentence regarding Say's Law struck me as cumbersome and in need of a little improvement. icut4u 22:03, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Ethics is most certainly not a branch of the social sciences (unless one really means an ethnographic study of moral codes, which does not seem to be the case). Not in any university I know, and not even on the social science article the sentence references and that is linked hereto. Ethics is part of the humanties, specifically, philosophy. In fact, there is also a kind of quantificationin branches of ethics...for example, the application of game theory (Nozick, Williams, and others) and, in metaethics, where philosophers make use of formal, logical construction. I corrected the sentence to reflect these facts. icut4u 04:32, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Phillips Curve:
Phillips Curve shows the relation ship between increase in money wage and the unemployment rate.It depict very important point about the rate of increase of inflation and the rate of unemployment.This is really a wonderful theory and talk about the historical data and its relationship with unemployment.The following diagram represent this relationship
Faraz Akhtar
That was recently added to the article as a 'new' field of economics. For one thing I don't think that is new or a valuable addition, but I didn't want to unilateraly revert. What do others think? - Taxman 17:05, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)
I look at the first sentence from October and it seems much better. It seems to have gotten worse since then. Or at least more narrowly defined, it seems to define economics as a certain school or schools sees it. It was broaded before. That it is focused on price was added since October, but is all economics focused on price? The early economists from Adam Smith to David Ricardo and so forth were not really price-obsessed, and there continues to exist a focus on other aspects of economics such as say production, although of course probably not among economic professors at American business schools. It also adds that this is "seen through the lens of allocation of scarce resources". This is another definition narrowing it in terms of economic schools. Some people might see it through the lens of the value provided by labor.
The paragraph after that is a recent addition (last two months), which also explains economics through the lens of one particular economic school. I'll deal with that later. Ruy Lopez 07:06, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I've created a section called "Schools of economic thought" with a subsection called "Neo-classical economics" into which I've moved some of the neo-classical assertions to. The opening four paragraphs now seem basically broad enough to encompass all of economics, but two paragraphs there previously asserted ideas of the neo-classical theory which I moved to the sub-section. Ruy Lopez 12:55, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I'm doing a little work here as part of the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. This article is listed on User:Taxman/Featured articles with references problems. Maurreen 09:33, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Recently added: "It studies allocation mechanisms that describe how to distribute limited resources among unlimited wants of people." So would there be no "economics" of a situation of abundance, such as the Potlatch cultures of the Northwest Natives? -- Jmabel | Talk 04:02, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)
The description for Neo-classical economics starts "Neo-classical economics begins with the premise that resources are scarce and that it is necessary to choose between competing alternatives." Frankly I just don't get it - does that imply that Keynsian Economics starts from a different premise, a premise that resources are not scarce? Does Marxian Economics start from the premise that one can in fact choose multiple alternatives? (Schroedinger's cat eat your heart out - we can have our cake and eat it too... At the same time!) Rather, I think that this characterisation of Neo-classical economics may be just the tiniest bit misleading. - JS 05:41, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Material flow:
Extractors => Raw Materials => Raw Material Transport => Processors => Product => Distribution => Consumption
According to what I understand to be the "laws" of economics, under the following circumstances one would expect a certain result:
1.) A raw material (crude oil)is provided at market price under production volumes, but not prices, determined by a cartel ( OPEC) to a number of processors (manufactures, in this case a number of refiners) who provide a product for distribution to consumers (various products, but predominantly motor fuels). End consumer market prices are set by supply and demand, as are raw materials prices to the processors under the production restraints imposed by the cartel. Assume that the flow-through and pricing have stabilized.
2.) a processor is disabled. Under the laws of economics (as I understand them), the price of the raw material (crude oil) should decrease (since demand is now decreased) or remain constant (if supply of raw material is reduced by producers in response to changed market conditions) and the price of the product should increase (assuming constant demand and reduced supply due to reduced supply from the processors.
Recently, there was a refinery explosion which disabled about 3% of the U.S. processing of petroleum products.
Contrary to the expectations outlined above, the price of crude oil ("Raw Materials" above) increased.
This seems counter-intuitive. Can any expert explain this in rational market terms?
Thanks in advance, Leonard G. 03:51, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
This is the first time I've posted anything on Wikipedia before, but I had to answer Leonard's question.
If a processor is disable, demand doesn't shift back, supply shifts back. This is the cause for the price increase. It is also, to an extent, the main ideas behind Reaganomix, Thatcherism, and suppl-yside economics, only with the AD/AS model instead of a simple basic supply/demand graph.
I might as well pose a question of my own. Higher taxes on the rich and less on the poor are supposed to help income disparity right? Well, when I look at the basic supply/demand graphs, the exact opposite happens.
Take a the high-end income labor market, for example, and say taxes are increased on those laborers earning high-income. This in turns increases their costs, and because of this, shifts their supply curve back. In response there are less high-end laborers, with even higher incomes. The point of more taxes on the rich is to create more less-income laborers.
Oddly enough, the same things happens with low-income laborers. If taxes are decreased on low-income laborers, this means less costs, which means their supply curve shifts outward. Because of this, the equilibrium price causes more poorer laborers.
Thoughts on this?
Hi. Does anyone think the opening should define economics as the study of resource allocation instead of production and consumption? After all, not all of the problems studied by economics directly involve produciton and consumption. It's usually defined that way. Does anyone think that's POV? Mgw 23:42, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Hi, I am working to encourage implementation of the goals of the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. Part of that is to make sure articles cite their sources. This is particularly important for featured articles, since they are a prominent part of Wikipedia. The Fact and Reference Check Project has more information. Thank you, and please leave me a message when you have added a few references to the article. - Taxman 19:20, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
Can anyone clarify for me what is meant by the phrase "through measurable variables" in the first sentence of the article? - Nat Kraus e 10:21, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Seems like a euphemism for socialism.
It was wrong. And I think the greek spelling is still wrong, but I don't have a dictionary with me. -- pippo2001 09:54, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I've been slowly working on Category:Economics and am hoping that anyone who watches this page might be able to help. The main category has more than 150 articles and many should be sorted into subcategories. I don't know much about the subject. Maurreen 23:44, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I reverted the edit made by 82.32.64.213 on June 19th to last version by Muijzo. That user then reverted the edit that I made. The only thing I agree with his change is the term "ceteris paribus". UH Collegian 17:13, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Yes clearly it's not all things equal because when using ceteris paribus, the point is to discuss a change in one thing holding the rest equal. That change means not all things are equal. So your university is at odds not only with how it is used everywhere else, but when it comes down to it, common sense too. Also at issue here, is reverting a change instead of just discussing it. When will people reallize that reverting changes that are made in good faith only leads to resentment and revert wars? Unless an edit is vandalism or is actively negative for an article, just discuss on the talk page why you disagree with the edits. If there is no response, then revert or adjust. Clearly that would have been better in this case since, UH Collegian, you started out saying "The only thing I agree with.." then moved to "The only thing I did not agree with..." then after reading the user's rational you agreed with the changes. The hard feelings (which could have gotten much worse) could have been easily avoided by the method I just outlined. Finally, to the anon, while you don't have to register, it does make keeping consistent conversations with you much easier, and you'll find people will automatically have a higher level of respect for your edits. - Taxman Talk 15:10, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)
The greek word oikos is spelled actually "οίκος", and "νέμω" is an archaic verb, meaning literally "to distribute", although it later received also the meaning of "rules" ("law" is a better translation to "νόμος", as "rule" is "κανόνας"). "to distribute" is actually more accurate to the meaning of economia. I can assure that, since my native language is Greek. Please edit this page; the server seems to be down at this moment.
There is a new portal. See Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Business, Economics, Finance. Maurreen 03:39, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
Someone recently moved the link to Tutor2u up near the top of the list. I'd never looked at it before, so I followed it, and basically got a splash page of ads, with content down the right margin. Should we link this at all? If so, does it really belong near the top of the list? I think not. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:36, July 21, 2005 (UTC)
The article
subsidy is currently nominated to be improved on
Wikipedia:This week's improvement drive. If you want to support the article, you can vote for it there.--
Fenice
17:50, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
You might also be interested in
Grameen Bank, an institution involved in microcredit loans in the third world. Vote for
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06:27, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
I think Economics would benefit from having a List of legal topics type list. I was talking to MyDogAteGodsHat too, does anyone know if there is a similiar topic for economics, and if there is a redirect to it from List of economic topics would be useful. -- ShaunMacPherson 06:45, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
This sentence is just plain wrong: "One way economists deal with this is to qualify discussions of economic choice by noting the qualifier ceteris paribus ("all other things held constant...") referring to moral or social factors that are (for the sake of argument) held equivalent for all choices that one might make."
The ceteris paribus assumption has nothing to do with ethics but is rather the simple recognition of the fact that at any particular time a given phenomenon is subject to multiple influences and in order to understand any of these we must consider them one at a time - all other things being equal. The way economists usually deal with ethical issues is by distinguishing between Positive (is) and Normative (ought) economic statements (which said distinction should be mentioned somewhere in the article, perhaps along with social welfare functions and the like). radek
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)
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)
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. BobW 67.103.183.204 23:05, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
header anonymously added without content User:61.246.156.234 6 Nov 2005
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.
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)
would you like to publish this article? -- Zondor 22:16, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Following changed to a redirect.
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
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.
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)
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
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)
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.
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)
I think there's a good case for adopting the JEL classification system [5] 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)
A good question. I'll see what I can find out JQ 02:29, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
What about; Conversely, economics is said to be positive when it tries to predict objectively. -- ∞ Dbroadwell 07:31, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
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)
Actually a more accurate statement would be that pretty much all economics except those based on labor theory of value deal with scarcity. The Austrians are definetly not neoclassical (whatever that is) and their theories are based on the idea of scarcity. Same for heterodox approaches to general equilibrium. The institutionalists sort of pick and choose. radek 03:21, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Would someone care to clean up Pat Devine and his socialist economics? Simesa 01:09, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
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.
It's not. Whoever wrote that has no idea of what they're talking about. I deleted the 'examples' as they're all pretty bad.
radek
23:05, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
"Why is it Goofy?" Taking them in turn: Pareto efficiency - this isn't a fallacy. You might not like the concept but it's not a fallacy. See logical fallacy Marginalism - again not a fallacy. First part of the criticism was okay though. Second sentence didn't make any sense. Lump of labour - yes this is a fallacy. But it's not a fallacy committed by economics or economists. It's a fallacy which results from LACK of knowledge of economics. See my comment above. Behavioral economics - It' still economics. Explores a particular area but it's still economics. It doesn't imply that non behavioral economics is a fallacy. Just tweaks some of the assumptions. Even then, Kahnemman himself said that 'mainstream economics applies in 90% of the situations. Behavioral economics is about the 10% when it doesn't. You want a criticism section, fine. But it's got to be much better than the crap that is there now.
I rewrote the section and deleted a small portion of it (particularly the lump of labor fallacy, which does not belong here at all). I'm fine with pointing out that there are disagreements and various theories and much internal as well as external criticism. But seriously Page, the part was just badly written and confusing, and well, wrong both by implication and outright. radek 02:48, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
I have removed:
Feel free to object. -- A Sunshade Lust 05:35, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Just a question. Is not the science more about the movement of money, either world wide or within a particular area? Of course there may well be many different approaches and economic phylosophies, but I suggest these are simply different ways of looking at the subject rather than the subject itself. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lleighton ( talk • contribs) 30 May 2006.
hi! I'm an editor on LostPedia, a Lost (TV series)-related wiki (and recently, an editor on wiki as well. this stuff is addictive!). i'm working on an economics article (IANAEconomist) over there with someone who is an economist; i'm acting more in the editing capacity, whilst the other user is supplying the facts, essentially. i'd really love some other wikipedians who are versed in this area (who are also good editors) to have a look at the article in question! my aim is to make the article a lot more understandable to people unfamiliar with economics as a science. it has the potential to be a truly excellent article if it can be distilled a bit more. your input is appreciated! -- Kaini 04:07, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
"The accounting measures usually used measure the pay received for work and the price paid for goods, and do not deal with the economic activities of those not significantly involved in buying and selling (for example, retired people, beggars, peasants)."
This could be a lot clearer, I think.-- 142.227.45.20 03:09, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
This article has really degenerated in quality over the last 6 months. As it stands now it is difficult to read, makes incorrect statements and does not adequately represent or even discuss well what "economics" is. As the artcile stands today, it is indicative of some of the problems that Wikipedia faces is producing output that is of high quality. I am, of couse, not the first nor the last to make these observations.
== I have to agree with the above - this article is also full of jargon. Can someone with a better understanding of economics please pull out the salient points and somehow move the rest into sub articles or whatever. For soemone who had no understanding of the topic at all, though I have some myself, this reads like anally retentive l337 sp33k.
Please excuse the intrusion, but how about just reverting the article to a past version with all of the drivel removed.. Seems like a good idea to me. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.17.118.55 ( talk • contribs) 8 July 2006.
Unlike natural scientists and in a way similar to what happen in other social sciences, economists are generally unable to test their theories due to its impracticality. Unlike the natural sciences, economics yields no natural laws or universal constants, so this has led some critics to argue that economics is not a science, or at best, is just a soft science. This is plain false. The Austrian School deduces the whole economics from just some axioms and empirical notions, these are nothing but universal constants for the world one lives in. Intangible 06:04, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
"Economics has been persistently criticized for its heavy reliance on unrealistic, unobservable, or unverifiable assumptions. Some people reply to this criticism by saying that the unrealistic assumptions of economics result from abstraction from unimportant details, and abstraction is necessary for knowledge of a complex real world. So, far from unrealistic assumptions detracting from the epistemic worth of economics, such assumptions are essential for economic knowledge. Denominating this explanation the abstractionist defence, and after clarifying abstraction, unrealistic assumptions and kindred notions, some studies have shown that this abstractionist defence does not successfully rebut the position of those who criticize economics for its unrealistic assumptions."
I have a lot of problems with the quoted material. First, it is copied nearly word for word from its source (although the source is cited). Second, most of the changes made to the text are to reword from first to third person. Examples; "I call this line of argument 'the Abstractionist Defense'." has been changed to "Denominating this explanation the abstractionist defence", making it seem as though the 'abstractionist defense' is a regularly used term. Also, "I show that the Abstractionist Defense does not successfully rebut the position" has been changed to "some studies have shown that this abstractionist defence does not successfully rebut". Making it appear as though there are multiple studies proving this, rather than just one person arguing it. Third, this is the abstract of one paper. Simple because one paper criticizes something does not justify it being included in an encyclopedia article. For these reasons I am removing the text from the article. William conway bcc 17:33, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
The following paragraph was poorly written and lacks citation. I am sure something like this belongs in the article; it should have citation. I would have copy edited it myself it I'd been sure of what it meant to say. And, yes, it began with a lowercase letter.
in modern times, alternative measures have been development to measure the welfare of a nation, flaws have been seen in modern toolds such as Gross domestic product, the index of social economic welfare (IESW) is published by the UN and show economic welfare more accurate as it factors in enviromental costs, it subtracts the cost to remove negatives to show how a society grows rather than measure GDP which is simply an measurement of all transactions.
I would even try to pick apart the syntax and grammar; I think there are supposed to be several sentences here. I'm guessing "have been development" ==> "have been developed", "toolds" might be "tools" (but that's not a very apt word, either). Someone want to take a shot at rewriting this in actual English? - Jmabel | Talk 06:40, 23 August 2006 (UTC)