ECON-1006EL Chapter Notes - Chapter 1-3: John Maynard Keynes, Neoclassical Economics, Econometrics
Document Summary
Economics: the study of how people make choices under conditions of scarcity and the results of those choices for society; the study of use of scarce resources that have alternative uses. Macroeconomics: the study of individual choices under scarcity and the implications of these choices for the behaviour of prices and quantities in individual markets. Microeconomics: the study of the performance of nation economies and the policies that governments use to try to improve that performance. Scarcity principle: we have to make choices; having more of one good thing means having less than another; tradeoffs are wide spread and important. Economic model: a representation of economic reality that highlights particular variables and the relationships among them. Rational decision maker: someone with clear objectives who behaves logically to achieve those objectives. Adam smith: scottish economist who wrote the wealth of nations probably the most in uential economics book ever written; it is self-interest that makes people behave.